Myanmar’s ersatz elections

General elections held in Myanmar (Burma) on 7 November 2010 were the country's first in 20 years. Foreign media and election monitors were banned; election turnout has been reported as low.

Analysts and external observers have warned against what they largely see as a sham election, with the military junta setting the scene for a formal confirmation of its hold on power. Will there be a viable political alternative for Burmese voters, and what will these elections mean for opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi? Vaughan Yarwood seeks an answer.

On 1 November 2010, with just days to go before Myanmar’s first poll in two decades, the country’s state media warned against a boycott of the ballot and declared voting to be “a national duty”. The ruling generals are keen for a large turnout on 7 November – not because there is any danger of them losing their stranglehold on power, but to give the imprimatur of legitimacy to what is considered almost universally to be a sham poll.

In October 2010, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Quintana, called the election process “deeply flawed and disappointing,” and a British delegate labelled the result “a foregone conclusion.” Delegates from Thailand, India and China – Myanmar’s chief trade partners – have dismissed Quintana’s report as biased.

Nevertheless, the man who masterminded Myanmar’s election, senior general Than Shwe (pictured), certainly stacked the deck against any surprise ousting of the military junta that has controlled Myanmar for decades. For one thing, a quarter of all seats in the new parliament and regional assemblies have been reserved for the military, in addition to which many officers have resigned their posts in order to stand for parties which are widely seen as little more than military proxies.

Then there is the considerable cost of fielding candidates. Some 37 political parties have emerged to contest 1,163 seats. But the government’s own Union Solidarity and Development Party, headed by the junta’s current prime minister, Thein Sein, has access to unlimited state funds and is the only one to field candidates in all constituencies. With unopposed candidates being legally assured of election, the party is therefore already guaranteed victory in some seats.

Other parties, which are prohibited from making speeches that “tarnish the image” of the armed forces, say their supporters are being harassed by the authorities. Reports from Myanmar in October claimed that Internet services had become erratic as a result of the junta’s attempt to hinder communication in the lead-up to the poll.

Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest since winning the elections in 1990, is automatically disqualified from contesting the 2010 poll under new election laws that ban prisoners from standing as candidates.

The legislation also requires all political parties to re-register with the government-appointed Union Election Commission. To do so, Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party would need to expel some 500 of its members who are incarcerated.

The NDL refused to mount a campaign without its leader and has been formally disbanded by the election commission. Suu Kyi, in turn, advised undecided supporters not to vote for authorised parties in the poll.

The state-controlled New Light of Myanmar newspaper was highly critical of the NDL’s stance, saying: “Every citizen who values democracy and wants democratic rule must cast their vote without fail”.

A commentary carried by all state-run newspapers the following day applied further pressure with a barely veiled threat. “If the election is aborted [through boycott] there will not be a government that’s elected by vote of the people”, it said. “The ruling government would have no choice but to remain in charge of state security until it holds another election. If so, this will take a long time.”

The prospect of walking away from even such a slender and manipulated chance at democracy has caused a split in opposition ranks, with a splinter faction of the NLD, the National Democratic Force (NDF), deciding to contest the 2010 elections.

Its chair, Than Nyein, a 70-year-old former political prisoner, told a BBC journalist working in Myanmar undercover – the junta has banned foreign journalists and election observers – that the NDF was determined to offer voters a choice.

“Our people have been living in a very, very difficult time for the past 20 years,” he said. “I can say that they are really suffocating, so if we can create at least a breathing space for them, I think we will have done something for them”.

Aung Zaw, the Thailand-based editor-in-exile of the online magazine Irrawaddy, expects the elections to merely deliver a “military dictatorship with a civilian face”. Any transition to democracy is likely to be “bumpy, if not bloody”, he says, especially given rising tension among armed ethnic groups such as the Kachin Independence Army which has had a 16-year ceasefire with the country’s ruling generals.

“I don’t think the election will be free and fair,” he told the BBC Bangkok correspondent Alastair Leithead. “It will not bring any legitimacy, but at the same time governments in the region are likely to prop up and support the election outcome, and may think the election is the only game in town.”

As if to inject a sense of occasion, just weeks before election day the junta unveiled a new national flag of Myanmar (pictured), to replace one introduced by a former military strongman in 1974.

Aung Naing Oo, a political scientist who took refuge in Thailand in 1988, told Leithead that the election would be the first step in what he called a “long road to democracy”.

Naing Oo felt that having withdrawn her party from the political process on ideological grounds, Aung San Suu Kyi was unlikely to have a formal political role in the country after 7 November. She was due to be released from house arrest on 13 November. In any case, Naing Oo felt she had not shown herself capable of translating popularity into power.

Nevertheless, said Naing Oo, “she is a very rare kind of politician – untainted – and in a country like Burma with the worst corruption in the world we need someone to look up to. Politics is very dirty.”

Teaching the Students a Lesson

With farmers struggling to subsist on the land and with no strong workers’ unions, protest in Myanmar has largely fallen to students and, later, monks (pictured below at a 2007 protest).

Student protests in the Burmese capital, Rangoon, in 1988 sparked a mass uprising that saw Aung San Suu Kyi emerge as leader of the opposition. A harsh government crackdown followed.

The junta broke up the universities into a number of smaller ones and relocated them away from population centres to reduce their influence. Rangoon University, once the country’s largest, now has no undergraduate students and just 2000 graduate students.

The generals closed the universities for three years, from 1988 until 1991 and shut most of them again, this time for four years, after the demonstrations of 1996.

To further suppress student activism, the junta has since encouraged distance learning, in which students attend university only during weekends or for a short period before exams. One former student activist in Myanmar, Win Min, writing on the University World News website, claimed that teaching staff were also encouraged to inform on students.

“My view is there needs to be an economic reason for people to come out onto the streets, not just a political one. In 1988 it was demonetisation when the military government cancelled the banknotes and money became just paper and the people did not have money to buy food. In 2007 it was the increase in the price of petrol so people could not afford bus fares,” wrote Win Min.

“The outcome of the [7 November 2010] election is difficult to predict... It will not be like Iran. In Burma the students have been silenced.”

- by Vaughan Yarwood