Japanese monitoring team arrives in Yangon ahead of historic Myanmar general

The group, led by Yohei Sasakawa, chairman of the philanthropic Nippon Foundation, will visit facilities including polling stations in the city on Saturday and Sunday, before returning to Japan on Monday.

“We’re afraid of what happens after the election”, Myo, 33, said, requesting the use of an alias.

“This time the election committee is very open to worldwide bodies and our team has been accepted by the committee very smoothly”, he added.

Over the last four years, Myanmar’s military has loosened its grip, allowing a reformist government to come to power under a former general, Thein Sein.

Myanmar is holding a general election on Sunday, its second since polls in 2010 ended nearly a half-century of military rule.

A young supporter of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party prepares for a party to celebrate the final day of campaigning in Yangon, Myanmar, Thursday, November 5, 2015. She quickly cast her vote and left without speaking to reporters.

An inconclusive result could thrust a few of the 91 parties contesting the election, including many representing Myanmar’s myriad ethnic minorities, into a king-maker role.

The president will be selected from among candidates put forth by the military and the two houses of Parliament.

Aung San Suu Kyi was married to the British historian Michael Aris, who died in 1999.

Daniel Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, responded: “We will make our assessment based on what we hear and see, based on what we are told by Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD”. Most analysts, observers and journalists who have toured the country are certain the NLD will win the elections – if they are free and credible.

Aung San Suu Kyi has urged everyone participating in the general election to ensure a fair, free and smooth vote.

Suu Kyi couldn’t vote in any of those elections, either because she was under house arrest or there was no election in her residential area.

The political evolution of Myanmar is so central to Clinton’s legacy that she raised it at one of the most stressful moments of her presidential campaign – a Capitol Hill hearing on Benghazi last month – to prove her ability to bridge political divides in Washington.

The election is seen as the country also known as Myanmar’s best chance in decades to move toward greater democracy if Suu Kyi’s party secures the highest number of seats in the bicameral Parliament and gets the mandate to govern.

President Thein Sien’s ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) with military backing will be a major contender against Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, despite her popular mass appeal.

She appears set to march back into Parliament.

In fact, it does state that the president “takes precedence over all other persons” in Myanmar. While Suu Kyi is likely to be elected as a member of the lower house, she has been rendered ineligible to become president.

While the administration of current President Thein Sein has relaxed restrictions, pushing through expansive political and economic reforms and bringing the country out of decades of authoritarian rule and global isolation, watchers say that the elections are still far from free and fair.

“I’ve done my bit for change, for the emergence of democracy”, said 55-year-old former teacher Daw Myint after casting her vote for the NLD in Yangon.

As daughter of the country’s late independence hero, Suu Kyi is treated with near-reverence by many people.

The military, which controlled state power since 1962, has been accused of various human rights violations. The NLD must take 67% of all contested seats in order to gain a majority. Suu Kyi was elected a member of parliament for a suburb of Yangon.

Local reports indicate there has been a larger police presence on the streets in recent days, after around 40,000 so-called election police were recruited to maintain security.

She is barred from taking the presidency herself under a constitution written by the junta to preserve its power.

“We’ve been welcomed into polling stations and every question we’ve asked has been well answered”, she said by a polling station at a monastery, where voters had removed their shoes as a sign of respect.