Baby
step towards democracy in Myanmar By Brian McCartan
The official tally
will not be announced for days, but initial
indications are that the Aung San Suu Kyi and her
National League for Democracy (NLD) party notched
a sweeping win of Sunday's highly anticipated
by-elections in Myanmar. Despite obstacles placed
in the path of the NLD's campaign and charges of
voting irregularities the party is reportedly on
pace to win most, if not all, of the seats it
contested.
The party announced soon after
the close of polls Sunday evening that its
charismatic leader Suu Kyi had won in her
constituency of Kawhmu, a rural area south of the
commercial capital Yangon. Should the results be
officially confirmed, the former political
prisoner and Nobel Peace Prize laureate will make
the transition from dissident to member of a
parliament dominated by a party
backed by the military
establishment she has long fought against. The
Union Election Commission announced days before
the vote that ballot counting would take about a
week. This delay did not stop Suu Kyi's supporters
from gathering in their thousands to celebrate
Sunday night at the party's headquarters in
Yangon. The NLD's informal election monitoring
network claimed on Sunday night it may have won a
landslide victory of all 44 seats it contested.
A total of 45 seats were contested for the
national and regional parliaments. The vote
accounted for 7% of the 664 seats in Myanmar's new
upper and lower house of the national parliament.
The party's monitoring of the vote is expected to
place pressure on the government to ensure the
official tally is similar to its predicted result
or risk outrage from the NLD's grass roots
supporters.
The vote included four seats
in the new capital Naypyidaw. A victory there
would indicate important military and civil
service support for the NLD and an embarrassment
for the military-backed Union Solidarity and
Development Party (USDP). The USDP contains many
former members of the military dictatorship that
ruled the country until March 2011 and was the
overwhelming winner of the sham 2010 elections.
Even former military intelligence chief
and prime minister Khin Nyunt, who was purged and
placed under house arrest in 2004, hinted to
reporters that he had voted for the NLD.
The elections and the campaign leading up
to them have indicated strong grassroots popular
support for Suu Kyi and the NLD despite the small
number of seats up for grabs at the elections. For
a country that was under the heel of a harsh
military dictatorship for almost 50 years and
where many of those who voted on Sunday have never
known democracy, the outpouring of support for the
elections and the NLD is significant.
The
elections were a litmus test of sorts for both the
government and the opposition. If it was not clear
before, the USDP-led government is now aware of
the strong level of support for Suu Kyi and the
NLD, which reached almost hysterical proportions
in some constituencies. This was in sharp contrast
to the lack of fanfare at USDP rallies. New
general elections are due in 2015 and some viewed
the by-elections as a barometer of voting behavior
for the next polls.
Foreign governments,
including the United States and some European
countries, were eager to view the polls as
indication of how far democratic change has taken
hold in Myanmar since President Thein Sein began
to enact various reforms in the middle of last
year. The US and the European Union (EU) have
indicated that the fairness of the by-elections
will be a factor in determining whether to lift
their respective economic sanctions.
Despite government vows of holding a free
and fair election, there was concerns that the
same irregularities that made the 2010 elections
widely viewed as rigged could be repeated. The
polls were observed for the first time by
international monitors, including a five-member
team from the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) and two representatives each from
the United States and the EU, as well as diplomats
and members of both domestic and international
media. While not allowed into the polling
stations, outside observers were given the freedom
to travel about the country and interview voters.
Election observers have been generally
positive in their appraisal of the voting process.
While indicating some irregularities, they have
noted that the infractions were minor compared to
the intimidation and vote-rigging that undermined
the credibility of the 2010 elections. Suu Kyi and
her NLD have complained about irregularities in
voting lists, defacement of their posters and
campaigning by government officials on behalf of
USDP candidates.
The US gave its cautious
support for the elections on Sunday. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton welcomed the vote while in
Istanbul, Turkey, for a meeting on Syria. "It is
too early to know what the progress of recent
months means and whether it will be sustained,"
Clinton said. "There are no guarantees about what
lies ahead for the people of Burma [Myanmar], but
after a day responding to a brutal dictator in
Syria, who would rather destroy his own country
than let it move toward freedom, it is heartening
to be reminded that even the most repressive
regime can reform and even the most closed society
can open."
ASEAN secretary general Surin
Pitsuwan gave his support to the polls during a
conference on Sunday in Phnom Penh, Cambodia,
noting that they were "going rather well up to
this point." "I have been in touch with the
[monitoring] teams very, very closely and they
report full enthusiasm, full alert, full awareness
of all parties involved in the by-elections."
This is the first time that Myanmar's
voters have been able to show their outright
support for Suu Kyi and the NLD through a
democratic vote since the 1990 elections. The NLD
won those elections by a landslide but were barred
from forming a government by the country's
military rulers who banned the results. The NLD
boycotted the 2010 elections in protest against
what it said were unfair election laws.
Since then relations between the NLD and
the government have improved significantly. Suu
Kyi has met with senior government officials,
including President Thein Sein, and been invited
to give her opinion on the economy and other
issues. The release of political prisoners,
including many prominent activists, the relaxation
of media restrictions and other reforms have
persuaded the NLD to rejoin mainstream politics
and given new legitimacy to Thein Sein's
quasi-civilian administration.
Brian
McCartan is a freelance journalist. He may be
reached at bpmccartan1@gmail.com.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online
(Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road,
Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
