East Timor's first president to be war hero Gusmao

Xanana Gusamo, the East Timorese guerrilla leader who spent seven years in an Indonesian prison, is on the verge of being declared the country's first head of state after presidential elections yesterday.

Final results are not expected until Wednesday but the only unanswered question is how huge a share of the vote Mr Gusmao will win. Early predictions were that it would be as high as 80 per cent. His only rival, Francisco Xavier do Amaral, who also fought against Indonesia after it invaded East Timor in 1975, said he had no hope of victory and was standing only to give voters a choice.

Yesterday, the two men embraced and joined arms before entering the same polling station in the capital, Dili. Electoral observers reported no substantial irregularities during yesterday's voting, although last week there were allegations that opponents of Mr Gusmao had been running an undercover campaign to trick voters into spoiling their ballots, and thus reduce his majority.

The president will be sworn in next month, when 32 months of United Nations' stewardship ends and East Timor becomes the 21st century's first new country. Some 439,000 people were eligible to vote in the elections, which mark the last stage but one in East Timor's painful 28-year transition from Portu-guese colony to independence.

After Indonesia invaded, Mr Gusmao became the leader of the East Timor guerrilla army in the 1980s and held out against overwhelming Indonesian opposition. After his betrayal and arrest in 1992, he became an international hero.

Visitors to Jakarta's Cipinang jail smuggled letters and mobile phones to allow Mr Gusmao to speak to his commanders in East Timor. Human rights groups demanded his release and foreign dignitaries such as Nelson Mandela visited. He was freed in 1999.

Mr Gusmao said repeatedly that he preferred gardening and poetry to politics. But there is no other credible candidate. East Timor's Nobel peace prize winners – the Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, and the Catholic bishop Carlos Belo – begged him to run.

But East Timor will be more than just a Xanana republic. Power will rest with Fretilin, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, which controls the national assembly. The presidency is largely symbolic but Mr Gusmao will bring to it his huge moral authority. Whoever is in charge, East Timor faces enormous difficulties – next month, it will instantly become the poorest country in Asia.