While the attention of the world remains riveted on an election taking place this week, another election of significance to this region will take place five days later, in Myanmar which was conditionally welcomed into the comity of democratic nations five years ago.

At the threshold, it was known that Myanmar was giving itself a flawed democratic structure for it yielded to its military a quarter of the parliamentary seats and accepted a condition where the country’s best known leader, Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi would be forced to play a constricted role because of a constitutional bar on her becoming de facto head of government.