Supporters of Myanmar’s National League for Democracy party set up a stage outside the main train station before a rally in Yangon, November 5, 2015. In a report this year, Amnesty worldwide described Myanmar’s treatment of media as “repression dressed up as progress”.
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(AP Photo/ Gemunu Amarasinghe).
Two New Zealand politicians will be arriving in Myanmar today to officiate its general election next week.
She said they hoped for the best, but were prepared for the worst. It’s about being fully embraced by the global community. Observers say Suu Kyi could seek her own alliance with a compromise candidate for the presidency, which will be decided after the election in a complex process that could take several weeks.
Yet she knows that, whatever the outcome, there will have to be arduous negotiations with military-aligned interests still looking to retain control.
If the polls are right, her National League for Democracy will win the first openly contested vote in 25 years in Myanmar, also known as Burma. It would then use the moral force of such a win to compel the rest of parliament – and a few of the military – to join it in changing the constitution.
A few 30 million people are expected to vote for more than 6,000 candidates standing for 91 different political parties. Myanmar is a country with a long and proud history of nationhood.
Suu Kyi “is the democracy icon for this country”, he said.
Sunday’s elections are not without flaws, which raise concerns about their impartiality.
There have been irregularities with a few early-voting activities, she said.
“We won’t be everywhere, but we’ll have a good sample”, said Jonathan Stonestreet, who heads a team from the Carter Center, which has overseen more than 100 elections across the globe.
Many basic rights are restored, including the lifting of restrictions on assembly and expression, while hundreds of political prisoners are freed. Those restrictions remain a drag on USA investment in a country rich in oil, gas and minerals, and with a largely unexploited market of 55 million people. In a teeming, cacophonous slum in Yangon, the country’s biggest city, the election has brought hopes of a brighter future.
Asked how vigilant she was to the possibility of poll fraud she said, if suspicions are raised “we will have to make a fuss about it”. The electoral calculus has been rendered all the more complex by the proliferation of ethnic-based parties which could well upset the plans of the two major parties in the country’s seven ethnic states. Its high-ranking members have a lot to lose economically if the NLD were to assume the reins of power, an unease that it shares with the Tatmadaw. Estimates suggest the USDP could win 15 percent of seats, mostly in areas dominated by the military and civil servants, who in 2010 were forced to vote for the ruling party.
Sunday’s vote is to fill 498 seats in Burma’s parliament. Her two sons are British nationals, as was her late husband. Prime Minister Narendra Modi sees Myanmar as India’s economic gateway to Southeast Asia and made the country a focus of his “Act East” policy. In 2012, she ran for and won a seat in parliament. However, she has lost a few of that aura since her release and has been criticized as being autocratic and for not speaking out enough for the Rohingyas – a Muslim minority group in the country that has been persecuted by the majority Buddhists – including by the Dalai Lama.
It has already been widely speculated that in such a situation, Ms Suu Kyi would be the real power behind her presidential nominee.
The NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi enjoy quite a bit of popular support, and feel that an election victory would be a just reward after the annulled results of the 1990 election, when the party delivered a crushing defeat to the junta-sponsored National Unity Party.
Suu Kyi was born on June 19, 1945 in Japanese-occupied Rangoon now called Yangon during the closing stages of World War II.
For almost a quarter century, politics in Myanmar were frozen. The disenfranchisement at this election of perhaps a million Muslim voters, and the disqualification on spurious grounds of many Muslim candidates, deserves more scrutiny. Ms Suu Kyi’s party would nearly certainly walk out of parliament.
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Now, three years after sampling partial success, she anticipates a full victory.
