Despite international criticism of the poll following the 2021 coup, Htwe views his participation not as a betrayal but as a necessary compromise.
Myanmar parliamentary candidate Kyaw Kyaw Htwe was once jailed by the junta for pro-democracy activism.
Now he is vying for votes in a military-managed poll starting on Sunday, coveting the former seat of the country's best known political prisoner -- Aung San Suu Kyi.
For the 60-year-old, the decision to contest the ousted Nobel Peace Prize laureate's constituency is not a betrayal of principles but a compromise in a country crippled by division.
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"We do not expect the whole country will be covered with gold after elections," said the People's Party candidate known to friends, family and his would-be voters by the nickname "Marky".
"We can get other opportunities step-by-step, only when the country has stability," he told AFP.
'Politics has disappeared'
Myanmar's military snatched power in a 2021 coup toppling Suu Kyi's government, declaring as fraudulent elections she won by a landslide, dissolving her party and plunging the country into civil war.
Now it has scheduled new polls -- pledging to return democracy.
Many international monitors have dismissed the move as a mere rebranding of military rule, and the junta has embarked on a crackdown punishing criticism of the vote with up to a decade in prison.
Marky once dissented shoulder-to-shoulder with Suu Kyi in the 1988 pro-democracy protests challenging the rule of previous military dictator Ne Win and catapulting her to fame.
Soldiers opened fire on the crowds killing around 3,000, Suu Kyi was whisked off to house arrest and Marky began the first of his prison stints that have totalled about 15 years.
Suu Kyi's rule saw a fever of democratic optimism, surging crowds and sweeping poetic speeches.
A two-hour drive south of Yangon in her former constituency Kawhmu, Marky battles apathy.
"People here have let politics go since Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was detained," he said, using the affectionate honorific many still call her by.
"Politics has disappeared lately. So we have to try to get it back on track."
Marky's campaign is less about policy than about asking people to buy back into electoral politics -- albeit on the military's terms.
It is slow, unglamorous work for his volunteers wearing shirts and caps in party colours of ketchup red and mustard yellow, often involving speaking to groups of just a handful of voters at a time.
"Now doing politics is being seen as committing a sin," said Marky.
'Mother cannot come'
Politics in Myanmar has always involved dealing with the military -- which has directly ruled the country for most of its post-independence history.
Even during the decade-long democratic thaw starting in 2011 when Suu Kyi was released and won civilian office, a quarter of parliamentary seats and key cabinet positions were reserved for officers.
A more ebullient campaigner than her husband who spent years sequestered in jail, wife Su Su Nway tries to curry support for him over loudspeaker by deftly alluding to Suu Kyi, whose party she once joined.
Casting herself as a proxy for the sidelined leader, she tells locals: "I'm mother's daughter".
"Please do not say that mother cannot come."
A lost path
Suu Kyi's real child sees anyone running to overwrite his octogenarian mother's 2020 mandate as a dupe.
"Some people just lose their path," said Kim Aris from his home in Britain. "This is so far from being free and fair that anybody even being involved in it is just being delusional."
But some Kawhmu voters have a nothing-to-lose mindset about participating in polls.
When a new parliament convenes, army officers will still claim a quarter of seats and the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party are considered the frontrunners in the restricted campaign.
Marky may find himself serving in opposition in a legislature opposed as illegitimate by many.
Still, he believes in participating in the vote.
"We believe there will be a beginning of a better road after the election," he says.
"If we do not do this work, who else will?"
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Asianet Newsable English staff and is published from a syndicated feed)
