Myanmar opposition weighs options
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - With the hint of a general election in the air, the largest
opposition party in military ruled Myanmar faces a dilemma. Should it or should
it not contest the planned poll in 2010?
The uncertainty that grips the National League for Democracy (NLD) was evident
in the statements that flowed from a rare meeting of its leadership during the
last week of April. The NLD has opted for a wait-and-see approach about
fielding candidates for next year's poll.
The party has tactfully used this pre-election summit at its headquarters to
test the political waters - now that the junta has
made a commitment towards parliamentary elections after 19 years as part of its
"roadmap to democracy".
It was a gamble with high risks, even possible jail terms for the 150 delegates
from across the country who attended. After all, the junta's oppressive sweep
has forced the party to close down all its offices across the country bar one,
and denied the party the right to meet as a collective for over a decade.
The regime in Myanmar has also arrested and imprisoned scores of NLD members,
including those elected to parliament during the 1990 poll. No one symbolizes
this more than Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who heads the
NLD. The pro-democracy leader continues to remain under house arrest, now in
its 13th year.
In a direct challenge to the junta's push towards the polls, the NLD's
chairman, Aung Shwe, called for the "unconditional release" of all political
prisoners - now over 2,100 - and freedom for Suu Kyi to pave the way for an
inclusive political environment ahead of next year's country-wide elections.
Some Western diplomats, such as United States ambassador of Southeast Asian
affairs Scot Marciel, believe the elections will only prove productive if all
parties are allowed to participate.
"At this point it's hard to have faith," Marciel told Asia Times Online in a
March interview. "Pretty much all the opposition is in prison. If the
government wants to make progress politically it has to include the people -
all the people. If no one else is involved, the problems will continue. What's
needed is a genuine political process that's inclusive. We [the US] love
elections, but not false elections. Those don't get you anywhere." (See
US finger on the pulse
March 3, 2009.)
The party's two-day gathering in Yangon, the former capital, also called for a
"review of the 2008 constitution" and "politically substantive initial
dialogue" between Suu Kyi and Myanmar's head of state, Senior General Than
Shwe, according to a NLD document.
Regarding the 2010 poll, the NLD held back from giving it any legitimacy by
stating, "We need to wait and see the political party registration law and
electoral law to decide whether we could participate in the election under this
constitution."
"The NLD is not going to give in to the junta very easily. The party wants to
hear the views of all leaders and to be able to speak in one voice when the
decision is made about the 2010 elections," said Zinn Lin, an NLD member
currently living in exile in Thailand. "The last time the party tried to meet
was in 1998, but the authorities didn't permit that gathering. And they have
been denied this right until now."
"It is uncertain what will happen to the delegates who came for the meeting,
because the party's headquarters was watched by hundreds of intelligence
officers and people from the special branch, taking pictures and filming it on
video," Zinn Lin told Inter Press Service. "Such intimidation is proof that NLD
members are not free to operate ahead of the election that the military regime
wants to have next year."
The climate of intimidation NLD members face is a far cry from what it was
during the months leading up to the 1990 general elections. "The 1990 elections
were conducted under a free and fair situation. Political parties openly
campaigned," said Win Hlaing, minister in the prime minister's office of the
National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB), the democratically
elected government in exile.
"There has been no positive change since then, after General Than Shwe's era
began," he said. "There is so much hardship and intimidation. The NLD and all
opposition voices are targets."
Mark Canning, the British ambassador in Myanmar, echoes such sentiments. "It
remains the case that the situation in Burma [Myanmar] is characterized by the
denial of freedom. It is a very, very repressive place," he said in Bangkok
last week.
The junta's oppression is rooted in the outcome of the 1990 poll that shocked
the military regime of the day, which had been in power since a 1962 coup. The
NLD, which had been formed ahead of that poll, won a convincing 82% of the
seats in the 485-seat legislature.
It was a victory fueled by local anger following 28 years of military
oppression and a brutal crackdown of a pro-democracy uprising in August 1988,
which saw over 3,000 unarmed protesters gunned down by troops on the streets of
Yangon.
The military regime refused to recognize the results of the 1990 election,
denying the opposition the opportunity to replace the powerful military
government.
To avoid a repeat of such an election debacle in 2010, the junta has pushed
through a new constitution with conditions that favor undiluted power of the
military, including a required 25% of the seats in the upper and lower houses
of the new legislature reserved for army officers.
The May 2008 referendum to approve the new constitution was mired in charges of
vote-rigging and other election malpractices. The junta, however, praised the
outcome, which it claimed had been endorsed by 94.4% of the voters and had a
98.1% turnout.
"The 2008 constitution makes it impossible for political parties to contest in
2010 based on their own vision," said Aung Htoo, general secretary of the Burma
Lawyers' Council, based in Mae Sot, on the Thai-Myanmar border. "Chapter 10
denies parties like the NLD to set their own objectives. Under this
constitution, you cannot even form a Green Party to campaign for the
environment.
"I don't think that the party registration law and the electoral law that the
NLD is waiting to see will improve anything," he said. "The constitution's
restrictions are what matters."
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