Myanmar election: what to expect

A luminary of the west, Aung San Suu Kyi waits at her family home on 54 University Avenue in the capital, Yangon, for what is being touted as the country’s first credible election in 50 years. Myanmar’s general elections are scheduled for November 8, the first since a nominally civilian government was installed in 2011. The NLD had swept the previous election in 1990, but the then-ruling junta ignored the results and placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for more than a decade. The mystique she enjoys as daughter of martyred independence leader Aung San, as leader of a doomed 1988 pro-democracy uprising and as a stalwart former political prisoner remains undiminished. According to our Constitution, nobody is above the president. Mr Wirathu, who told me he would like to see Ms Suu Kyi as president one day, was smug when he talked of the enormous influence wielded by monks, particularly in rural areas.

At the U.S. State Department, spokesman John Kirby has said key USA officials are closely watching the elections as an index of Myanmar’s progress from military dictatorship to democracy.

The electoral process is undermined by systematic and structural problems, including the lack of an independent election commission, ruling party dominance of state media, the reservation of 25 percent of seats for the military, discriminatory voter registration laws, and mass disenfranchisement of voters in a few parts of the country.

With national elections looming, the temperature is again rising. The constitution also limits the role of political parties to 75 per cent seats, the rest are reserved for the military.

If that nominee wins the combined parliamentary vote, which must take place within 90 days of the election, he or she would be answerable to her alone, she said. She stayed away from 2010 polls boycotted by the NLD and seen as sham by the worldwide community and was too young to vote in the last elections contested by Suu Kyi in 1990. It looked like that to the current president, ex-general Thein Sein, because Shwe Mann was openly talking about a possible postelection coalition that would include both his own USDP and Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).

Sky News travelled with her to watch her vote. This makes amendments to the constitution nearly impossible, which rules out a Suu Kyi presidency completely.

Suu Kyi is forbidden from taking the top spot because the charter disbars candidates with foreign-born offspring – her two sons are British nationals.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The United States is troubled by religious discrimination and the Myanmar military’s grip on politics as the nation heads into landmark elections Sunday that are an acid test of its democratic reforms.

“I think they will”, said Richard Horsey, an independent political analyst based in Yangon. “I hope the president will keep his promise”, said security guard Aung Htay, 54, referring to a speech by Thein Sein late yesterday in which he vowed “the government and Tatmadaw (army) will respect” the vote.

NLD spokesman Nyan Win is not pleased.

Suu Kyi said she will be “above the president”.

On a short flight aboard Air Force One, President Obama placed a phone call he hoped would have long-lasting implications. It is expected to change the pace and scope of the country’s democratic reforms.

But last week, former USDP chairman Shwe Mann told supporters at a rally in Bago region’s Phyu county, where he is running for a seat in parliament, that “it will be very hard to win” even that percentage of the legislature due to the NLD’s popularity.

“It seems there is not clear rejection but they are also not clearly allowing us”, Ichal Supriadi of the Asia Network for Free Elections, said yesterday.

But Walter Lohman at the conservative Heritage Foundation said that short of the vote being marred by bad violence, the administration would be likely to portray it as a step forward for Myanmar. (Interestingly, numerous resulting diasporas have resulted in many members of these various populations becoming Austin residents.) The NLD is more pluralistic and supportive of the rights of ethnic minorities and women. Concerns that the country’s new market opportunities have been moving into the direction of mostly benefiting just a small privileged elite and their cronies have been corroborated by recent revelations by Global Witness on the $31 billion jade trade. As leader of the Congress party, she dominated the government of former Prime Minister Mahmohan Singh before it fell from power a year ago.