Despite criticism of Myanmar’s “flawed” constitutional framework, international observers yesterday gave a largely positive appraisal of the elections, commending a well-run election day while highlighting major issues such as an opaque system of advance voting.

“There are serious flaws in the overall constitutional framework. The transition to democracy in this country is incomplete and ongoing,” said Jason Carter of the Carter Center election observation organisation. “But it’s impossible to deny what we saw on November 8, and that has illustrated the commitment and the potential for this country to expand its democratic principles more broadly and, we hope, quickly.”

The Carter Center, the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL), and the European Union’s Election Observation Mission separately presented preliminary findings on the November 8 polls, declaring their experience had been positive in the polling stations.

Nearly all the polling stations visited garnered positive assessments of voting and counting, according to the Carter Center statement. The EU’s preliminary statement echoed this, saying that 95 percent of observers rated the voting process “good” or “very good”.

The findings from international observers matched those of domestic observer groups, mainly the People’s Alliance For Credible Elections (PACE) and Charity-Oriented Myanmar, which had both praised the election process on November 9.

“All in all, we believe that the voting process on election day was a success and we continue to observe those aspects to which we could not have access and those aspects that are ongoing, including the tabulation of the results,” Mr Carter said.

One of those aspects was out-of-constituency advance voting – still a mystery to the international observers.

“That part of the electoral process was not transparent,” said chief observer of the European Union election observation mission Alexander Graf Lambsdorff. “It was more like a black box.”

Dommaso Magbual, ANFREL’s head of mission, said polling stations should be moved out of military installations.

“The fear is we have no idea what happened with respect to the casting of the [out-of-constituency advance] ballots,” Mr Carter said. “The best we can say is that this is the one major aspect of the process to which we had no access, and therefore it’s the one that gives us the greatest concern.”

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch Asia, said he was glad that the observation teams had addressed the UEC’s complaint mechanism as not being in line with international standards.

“The UEC is acting as the investigating committee, the judge and the jury. It’s the sole authority in handling these cases and determining what evidence gets examined, when and what the outcome is,” he said.

“There should be a system for independent, external review – not a three-person UEC committee where if the results aren’t accepted the appeal is again handled within the UEC.”

Meanwhile, observers found that one pre-election concern did not materialise. Myanmar’s highly contentious voter list, plagued by errors and even the presence of dead voters, proved to be an almost negligible issue, they said.

Bhojraj Pokharel, former chair of Nepal’s election commission, said that in less than 7pc of polling stations visited were people turned away. The EU observer mission had the same figure, with Mr Lambsdorff saying that in 7pc of polling stations, some voters were not on the roll.

However, many in Myanmar were still unable to vote, with mass disenfranchisement of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority. ANFREL said in a press release that the large number of potential voters who were excluded or unable to cast ballots was perhaps the election’s most significant shortcoming.

“We would have considered it positive if the election had been as inclusive as possible and we believe that that was not entirely the case,” Mr Lambsdorff said.

However, he said in a country with more than 30 million voters and 50 million people, the disenfranchisement of about 1 million stateless people did not discount the election.

“From a purely quantitative point of view, no, it does not render the election invalid or question its integrity overall,” he said, adding that the issue was not a purely electoral one, but a social problem.

Observers noted that the elections took place against an imperfect backdrop.

Reform of the legal and constitutional framework will be required in the future for truly genuine elections, said Mr Lambsdorff.

Right now, Myanmar’s elections fall short of genuine democracy because internationally the term applies to polls where at least one chamber of parliament is elected fully by the people, he said. In both of the country’s parliamentary houses, one-quarter of seats are reserved for the military.

Though ballots have been cast, they have not been counted – with the tabulation and publication process taking longer than initially expected.

The process has been altered at the last minute, with results in some cases bypassing district levels and travelling straight from townships to the state level, a change which prompted the NLD to complain.

“That has caused some confusion, however we believe that this does not necessarily indicate ill will,” Mr Lambsdorff said. “It is, as a general rule, however, fair to say that it’s difficult to have changes in these proceedings at such a late stage.”

He said the mission will keep its eyes on the process. However, the pace at which results have been coming did not seem to concern him.

“The UEC said before the election they will publish the results as they come in, with the first results expected after two days – not all of them,” Mr Lambsdorff said. “As long as the political actors here accept the way this is being done and it does not undermine in any way, shape or form the credibility of the publication process, no, I don’t see a problem there.”

All three observer groups will remain in Myanmar through the tabulation process.

“We call on the UEC to ensure that they’re posting those results at the township level, at the constituency level and also at the sub-commission level to the utmost possible extent,” Mr Carter said. “We would like to see all of that published in a very decentralised way.”

Results continued to trickle in yesterday from the Union Election Commission. In Yangon, the National League for Democracy on November 9 displayed with glee its tally of wins to thousands of singing and cheering supporters.

Meanwhile, the way some defeated politicians had accepted defeat has been “encouraging”, Mr Lambsdorff said.

“Many of the politicians who lost their seats congratulated their opponents. That is not often seen in Asian politics,” said ANFREL’s Mr Magbual.

“We observed in advance of the election there were a number of concerns – including security, the voter list, a host of other issues that could have impacted the election,” Mr Carter said.

“At the end of the day it seems that none of that came to pass.

“That to us is another indicator that the people of this country are ready to move forward in a democratic way.”