It’s now four years since Myanmar’s 2010 general election – stage five in the seven-step roadmap to democracy unveiled by General Khin Nyunt on August 30, 2003. Currently the country is taking the final step of building a modern, developed and democratic nation – discipline-flourishing, of course.

It’s hard to believe that when the roadmap was launched by the SPDC more than a decade ago it was broadly dismissed as a publicity stunt. Exactly three months previously, on May 30, 2003, Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD convoy had been viciously attacked by a bunch of regime-backed thugs near Depayin, Sagaing Division. More than 70 people are thought to have been killed – though in fact we have no clear picture of the events of that night, because no full investigation has ever been undertaken. To all of us in the commentariat, the roadmap was a feeble junta attempt to turn back the tide of hostile reaction in which it had been engulfed for three long months.

Yet it turned out to be a great deal more than that – so much so that it remains the defining strategic plan for the current transition. Along the way there’s been a rigged constitutional referendum in May 2008, a general election in November 2010 that was anything but free and fair, and a set of by-elections in April 2012 that saw the NLD become part of the mainstream political process. Today, the 2008 constitution and the 2010 election continue to set the framework for national politics.

You have to say that, to date, it’s been nothing less than a stunningly successful performance by a military elite that in the dark days of mid-2003 looked utterly bereft of support, ideas and direction.