The date of Nov. 7 ends months of speculation but not of controversy and international concern over what many Western democracies fear will be a contrived outcome.

The junta officially announced the date in a brief statement in the government's mouthpiece newspaper, New Light of Myanmar, and on state-controlled radio and television.

The election is expected to be tightly controlled and carefully monitored by the generals' own appointed elections commission.

On the same day as the election date was announced, the commission gave the 40 registered political parties until Aug. 30 to hand in the list of all their party members.

Fifteen parties have done so already, the New Light of Myanmar said.

A focus of international concern is Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, head of the National League for Democracy Party who is barred from running by an election law created by the generals in April.

The law disallows people, such as Suu Kyi, with criminal records from standing for office. She has spent many of the past 20 years under some form of arrest and detention.

She is currently under house arrest in Yangon, the former capital of Myanmar, called Burma before a name change by the junta.

Suu Kyi, 65, won a landslide victory in the last national elections, which took place in 1990. But the generals refused to acknowledge the results and power was never handed over.

Because Suu Kyi is barred, her party decided not to register for the election, although a splinter group has registered itself.

Also barred from running for office are religious groups, a move that disallows Buddhist monks whose protests that began in August 2007 stretched the patience of the junta.

Several thousand monks accompanied by students, opposition political activists and many women took to the streets over several weeks carrying banners, originally because of a rise in fuel prices.

The so-called Saffron Revolution ended Sept. 26 when the military moved in with force to end the protests. Officially 14 people died, including a Japanese photojournalist, but outside sources suspect upwards of 40 people were killed.

Myanmar often has faced harsh criticism over its proposed elections not just from Western countries but also from its Asian neighbors.

"We certainly do not have any expectation that what proceeds in Burma here will be anything that remotely resembles a free, fair or legitimate result," U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said last month.

Within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Burma has had to defend its election process and member states have called for elections to be more inclusive of groups, including Suu Kyi.

It is not clear just how much control the generals will allow to be passed on, regardless of the polling outcome. They have reserved for themselves 25 percent of seats in the upper house.

On top of the generals' reserved quarter of seats, Myanmar's Prime Minister Thein Sein, along with more than 20 other military ministers in the junta, officially have resigned their military positions to run in the elections as civilians.

Sein, a former lieutenant general, set up the Union Solidarity and Development Party. If the former military officers win their seats, as observers expect, they are likely to side with the military on almost every issue, increasing the generals' influence beyond their allotted 25 percent of seats.

Despite the junta's iron fist over demonstrations and street protests, it doesn't have as much control over some parts of the country as it would like, especially in northern border regions with India, Bangladesh and China. Rebel groups regularly run money and drugs back and forth across the mountainous frontiers.

Earlier this year a Myanmar ethnic rebel group warned the ruling military that clashes are inevitable in the run-up to a national election. The head of the Karen National Union, the political wing of the Karen National Liberation Army, joined the call by some opposition groups to boycott the election.

Zipporah Sein, head of the KNU, said ethnic minorities shouldn't vote because Myanmar's 2008 constitution doesn't recognize ethnic diversity. She said the KNLA would fight any attempt by the generals to force people to either join or form border guard militia that have been set up by the generals in some remote areas.

It is not known how long it will be after closing of polling stations Nov. 7 before results are announced.

It may be they are announced Nov. 13, the day Suu Kyi is released from house detention.

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