East Timor: Joe Humphreysreports from the troubled southeast nation, which goes to the polls today to elect a president.
It is first such ballot since the country gained independence in 2002 - after 2½ years of transitional rule by the UN, and a 24-year occupation by an often brutal Indonesian military.
It had been hoped the elections would show East Timor is on the road to success. Instead, however, they are raising fresh questions as to whether the Timorese people struggled for freedom, only to realise a failed state.
Ask why East Timor has fared so badly (it continues to have the lowest income per capita in Asia), and you will get a plethora of contradictory answers from aid workers, diplomats and local politicians.
Expectations were too high, ambitions were too low, the UN stayed too long, the UN left too soon; such are views of experts who seemingly agree on just one point, the situation is complicated.
Take, for example, last year's unrest which left 37 people dead and more than 150,000 displaced from their homes. A trigger was former prime minister Mari Alkatiri's decision to sack 591 soldiers who had gone on strike over alleged discrimination in the army. Passions were also inflamed by President Xanana Gusmão who, in a public pronouncement, unwittingly stoked up ancient ethnic rivalries.
Whoever should take the blame, the episode highlighted a failure of leadership which, in an ideal world, should be punished. This being East Timor (also known now as the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste), no action has been taken - except against one low-ranking minister who was found guilty of illegally distributing weapons.
Far from showing remorse, the leading figures implicated in last year's crisis are continuing to fight for power. Gusmão, a former guerilla leader once dubbed East Timor's Nelson Mandela, has broken away from the ruling party Fretilin to form his own political grouping. The outgoing president is seeking to become prime minister, and will compete directly against Alkatiri in June's parliamentary elections - a poll that is sure to test the country's security apparatus to its limit.
As for today's presidential election, outside observers are broadly satisfied about the conditions. This is despite sporadic fighting last week when Alkatiri joined election front-runner Lu-Olo Guterres, the leader of Fretilin, on the campaign trail.
The other main candidate in a field of eight is Dr José Ramos-Horta, the former Nobel peace laureate who dislodged Alkatiri as prime minister following last year's unrest.
Whatever the outcome of the series of ballots, East Timor's security situation is unlikely to improve. At least, that's according to José Luis de Oliveira, director of Timorese human rights groups' Hak Association.
"The priority for us is law enforcement, and getting the justice sector to operate without interference from politicians," he says.
Like many Timorese, he believes the government must address not just the latest wave of violence but the countless atrocities committed during the 1999 vote for independence.
At least 1,500 people were killed, and countless women raped, when pro-Indonesian militia went on the rampage - seemingly armed and supervised by the Indonesian military.
Last month Indonesia and East Timor reopened an inter-state inquiry into the murders. But the Bali-based Commission of Truth and Friendship has been dismissed as a farce by human rights observers.
At the hearings, Indonesian military chiefs and militia leaders - including Eurico Guterres, who controlled some of the worst killing squads - have denied any responsibility for the atrocities, blaming the UN instead for supposedly fuelling tensions.
James Dunn, a former Australian consul to East Timor, says attempts to portray the country's woes as stemming from some sort of civil war "makes me ill".
"What we are seeing in Bali is history being written in a most distorted fashion, and that destablisises the current situation."
Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous state, "is on its way to becoming a democratic country but it won't get there if it denies its past", he adds.
Human rights groups both in East Timor and Indonesia are now calling for the establishment of an international criminal court to prosecute those responsible for the slaughter of 1999. Ironically, such calls are being resisted by both Gusmão and several other Timorese politicians who believe prosecutions will sour relations with a neighbour on which East Timor is now dependent for food aid.
A country like Ireland, which played a prominent role championing the Timorese cause, could help to break the logjam. That said, the chances are slim of the UN sanctioning a criminal inquiry, especially now Indonesia has joined the security council as a temporary member until the end of 2008.
Can East Timor move forward without dealing with the past? De Oliveira, for one, believes not. "Without justice," he says, "we can't find peace".
Further pictures and articles from East Timor can be found at: www.ireland.com/focus/timor