Young people campaign ahead of East Timor's parliamentary election. Credit:Wayne Lovell But those supplies are fast running out, leaving East Timor largely bereft of direct oil and gas revenue. "The first field to go to Wickham Point will kill any subsequent project in the area in the foreseeable future," Jeffrey Feynman, an independent oil and gas consultant, told Interfax Natural Gas Daily. "There is so much competition in the region that a relatively small gas field such as Sunrise will become irrelevant, except … to reuse existing LNG equipment."

Xanana Gusmao, the 71-year-old former revolutionary fighter, president and prime minister, has insisted in a high-stakes gamble that gas from Greater Sunrise must be piped to a yet-to-be built refinery on East Timor's isolated southern coast, while a consortium of investors - including ConocoPhillips and Woodside Energy - says it is not viable to bring the gas to East Timor across a deep trench, and want the gas processed on a floating platform. Young men wave the flag of the CNRT, the party of former president Xanana Gusmao. Credit:Wayne Lovell The consortium partners have indicated publicly that they don't want to pipe the gas to Darwin. "The [election] candidates are striking heroic poses about negotiations with Australia," says Clinton Fernandes, an expert on Timor at the University of New South Wales, referring to UN-backed negotiations to resolve the bitter dispute between Australia and East Timor over maritime boundaries. East Timorese President Francisco Guterres, known as Lu-Olo. Credit:Wayne Lovell

Gusmao and the generation of leaders who fought Indonesia's 1975 invasion and 24 years of brutal occupation appear likely to hold on to power after a violence-free campaign. Their candidate, Francisco "Lu-Olo" Guterres, also a former resistance commander, won 57 per cent of the vote at presidential elections in March, signalling strong support for a "coalition of national unity" comprising Gusmao's National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction, or CNRT, and Fretilin, the most established party that appears to have run the most modern and professional campaign. One fifth of 750,000 registered voters will be casting ballots for the first time, in a country where half of the population is under 20. Credit:Wayne Lovell Jose Ramos-Horta, a former president and prime minister and still an influential figure in Dili, said most voters remain "politically, psychologically and emotionally attached" to national leaders who led the country during the independence struggle. He told the Portuguese news agency Lusa that Timorese is a "fundamentally patriarchal culture in which the oldest means experience and wisdom".

Supporters of Fretilin and Francisco "Lu-Olo" Guterres campaign in Dili during the presidential election in March. Credit:Wayne Lovell But Michael Leach, an expert on Timorese politics at the Swinburne University of Technology, said the complexion of the new government is hard to pick because of changing voter patterns. The median age of Timorese is just under 19 and with a voting age of 17, a fifth of voters will cast their ballots for the first time. Xanana Gusmao led the negotiations at The Hague. Credit:Wayne Lovell The People's Liberation Party (PLP), led by 60-year-old former president Taur Matan Ruak, also a resistance commander in the occupation years, is supported by a host of younger Western-educated Timorese from Dili's intelligentsia.

"If we don't know how to involve young people in the development process they can become a time bomb," he told reporters. The PLP favours military conscription, prompting critics to argue it would be dangerous to train youths in use of firearms and be conditioned to follow hierarchical orders in a country where mobs made up mainly of youth rioted in 2006. According to La'o Hamutuk, an independent NGO in Dili, almost half the population live in poverty, two-thirds live in rural areas, largely by subsistence farming, and about 1200 children under five die from preventable conditions every year – 15 times the number who die from physical violence. The country has almost no industry and a tiny private sector. Leach said Gusmao's personal legitimacy and popularity as a former resistance commander remains the cornerstone of his party.

And Fernandes said Gusmao's large election war chest means he can communicate his message better than his rivals. Gusmao's party has been well supported by businesspeople, who have benefited from government contracts, and the beneficiaries of pensions. "His donors have good reason to believe he will win comfortably and he also probably retains the trust of enough people to do so," Fernandes said. Two decades after Timorese bravely defied violence and intimidation to vote to break away from Indonesia in a UN-run referendum, Gusmao will remain the country's most powerful figure after the election, analysts say. He has been tasked with leading the Greater Sunrise negotiations when a conciliation commission releases its findings on September 19.

In mid-July, ConocoPhillips left open the possibility of gas from fields other than Barossa being piped to Darwin, and said it is assessing several options. These may include Greater Sunrise. East Timor's national oil company has also expressed hope in a possible gas field south-east of the country called the Crocodile project, which is 100 per cent owned by East Timor. Onshore exploration is also planned. But analysts say that even if Greater Sunrise or other fields are developed soon, East Timor's leaders will face having to implement austerity programs by 2026, given the rate of the country's spending on infrastructure and other programs. Loading Some analysts predict Gusmao may be willing to soften his stance on Greater Sunrise once the election is out of the way.

"Whoever may be the next prime minister, the government and also the national parliament will have some key national priorities ... in particular namely the continuation of building key infrastructure," Ramos-Horta told Reuters.