Twenty years ago, when the people of Burma (now known as Myanmar) went to the polls, 80% of the population turned out to vote. They voted overwhelmingly for Aung San Suu Kyi.  It was such a slap in the face to the ruling military junta that it's taken them 20 years to try it again, but this time, they've decided to take no chances.

Suu Kyi has spent more than a decade and a half under house arrest and out of view of the world and her own people, yet she is universally revered as perhaps only Nelson Mandela has been in recent history.  So two years ago, the government created a constitution that would specifically bar her from any future political participation. Her party, the National League for Democracy, considerably weakened by years of harassment, imprisonment and dispersement of their top leadership, has chosen not to participate in what they called 'sham elections'. 

There are other parties which have formed to contest the dominance of the United Solidarity and Development Party and the National Unity party – both representing the military junta -  but they have been hampered from campaigning, or had trouble raising even the $500 registration fee per candidate.
 

Military junta taking no chances

25% of the seats are already reserved for the military, but a plethora of generals retired from the army just so they could contest the civilian seats.  Just to be sure that a good chunk of the over 2,000 candidates representing the military government do get in, there’s evidence to show that voters are being threatened if they don’t vote for either the USDP or the NU parties.

Many western governments have condemned the way the elections have been carried out.  Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said "The elections weren't free and fair… but we call upon the Myanmar government to let these elections be the beginning of a process of reconciliation between government, opposition and all ethnic groups in Myanmar".

Lydia Stilma from the Burma Centre says that USDP supporters were coercing voters to cast votes in favour of the USDP in the days leading up to the elections and even haranguing them outside voting booths.

“The Rakhine, Mon and Shan states all put up their own ethnic representatives for the regional seats, so if the USDP wins there, then we will know for sure the elections were rigged,” she says.

Tin Soe is editor of the Chittagong based Kaladan Press which represents the Rohingya people of Arakan state.  He says that his reporters on the ground say that the Rohingya candidates contesting the three seats in northern Arakan state all won with a landslide, despite the combined tactics of bullying and bribery by USDP candidates in the election run-up.  “Rohingya in Burma are only allowed white ID cards which indicate they are only temporary residents of the country, but USDP supporters came to the villages and told people that if they voted USDP they would get the pink cards which mean they have full citizenship…they also promised that if they won, the Rohingya would get more freedom to practice their religion and they’d stop forced labour practices – but no one believed them and they voted for their own people.”

Cautious optimism
Some western watchers are expressing a cautious optimism about the elections.  “We know that the voting results will definitely not be fair,” says Stilma, “but this process is the first chink of hope that some day there may be democracy in Burma.  It’s an embryonic democratic process but it may give opposition parties a bit more of a voice than they now have, and perhaps the next elections will provide more of an opening-up of the process.”

But Tin Soe is not optimistic.  “Even if they (the Rohingya candidates) are allowed to take the three seats, it's only three seats out of 244.  And nothing will really change, not for the Rohingya, and not for Burma – it’s all really still the same military junta under another name and colour.”