Selection Field & "must enter a value"

In continuation to the issue in http://drupal.org/node/41846:

The current behavior discussed in the above link does NOT provide the enforcement of entering a value to a selection field (e.g. country, date of birth etc.) by a user registering.

The solution provided in the fix for 4.7 which is now a part of 5.x (see the above link) doesn't do the job! Now, when having "The user must enter a value" checked for the country selection list field , most of the registrating users leave the default value (first optional value in the list) of the country field as it is ("Abkahazia") and it means = the field is practically still optional!

We must have the "--" option also for mandatory fields AND REGARD THIS VALUE as the same as the case when the user did NOT feel the field (which is exactly what happens).