Myanmar election: Last day of campaigning

Suu Kyi was responding to a question about how the NLD will deal with the military, called the Tatmadaw, if the party assumes power. Or that her party can govern effectively.

Ms Suu Kyi said the NLD had collected reports of advanced voting “carried out in a totally illegal way”.

Final preparations were underway on Saturday for Myanmar’s first meaningful election in a generation, the day before the historic poll that could see Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition launched to power after decades of army rule.

This society always uses its heart instead of its brains. Suu Kyi’s elevation into a democracy champion happened nearly by accident after she returned in 1988 to nurse her sick mother.

With seven major ethnic minority groups in Myanmar, many of them speak their own language and are likely to support their own ethnic political parties, believing they would better understand them and their needs.

Previously known as Burma, Myanmar holds a particular fascination across Asia and the West partly because it was closed off from the world for so long. It achieved independence from the British in 1948, but not peacefully.

In 1988, Suu Kyi returned from exile amid a popular uprising against the Burmese regime. The Southeast Asian country holds its general elections on November 8, marking the first ostensibly free elections in two-and-a-half decades in the country.

Most US economic and political restrictions were suspended three years ago after Myanmar’s repressive junta ceded power to a quasi-civilian government. Under the Constitution, 25 per cent of seats in the Upper House and the Lower House are given to appointed representatives from the military. The president would have to be Shwe Mann for constitutional reasons, but Suu Kyi could be the most powerful member of his cabinet, which would be loaded with NLD members.

Htike Htike, program director at MIDO, which developed Kyeet, said that her team looked at the Indonesia example. She then brushed off a query about whether the constitution would allow such an arrangement.

“That clause in the constitution”, says Global Post journalist, Patrick Winn in Yangon, “was specifically put in there to prevent her from being president”.

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”. They have shown up by the tens of thousands as she has campaigned across Myanmar’s vast hinterlands.

For its part, the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) has been surprisingly absent from the streets of the two main commercial towns-Mandalay in the center of the country and Yangon.

“There is advance voting taking place in a totally illegal way”, she said, adding that the nation’s election commission has done little to stop it. The attack inspired Wednesday’s rally, which drew hundreds of rickshaw drivers to the streets.

But with 11,000 local and worldwide monitors overseeing 40,000 polling stations, election observers said they are hopeful any attempts at systematic wrongdoing will be spotted. But what concerns us is when we see seemingly arbitrary arrests…. Burma was never going to become a full democracy in a single breathtaking leap, but this outcome would get it a long way down the road without panicking the army.

Myanmar sits strategically between India and China, he noted.

Myanmar, a former British colony, is still heavily under the influence of the military.

Yet it is far from certain that Myanmar will continue down this path, just as it is unclear that Suu Kyi will win in a landslide.

But the NLD’s aggressive stance in a few ethnic areas during the campaign alienated other parties, a few of which are now adamantly opposed to the NLD.

Shwe Mann, who remains a ruling party member and speaker of parliament, was ousted as chairman of the USDP in an August 12 reshuffle.

Suu Kyi will still probably need Shwe Mann, because this election is not going to be like the last free election in 1990, when the NLD swept the board.

The current Constitution gave the military control of key ministries such as defence and home affairs, which included police.

“I hope the president will keep his promise”, said security guard Aung Htay, 54, referring to a speech by Thein Sein late Friday in which he vowed “the government and Tatmadaw (army) will respect” the vote.