/ 19 October 2010

Fear trumps fairness on Burma’s campaign trail

Fear Trumps Fairness On Burma's Campaign Trail

Fearful voters and veiled military threats ahead of Burma’s first election in two decades have turned the campaign trail into a largely one-sided show overwhelmingly in favour of proxies for the ruling army.

“The people are extremely frightened,” Tin Aye (67), one of many independent candidates, told Reuters in a comment echoed by other candidates. “I can’t find anyone willing to host meetings. Today, I could talk with only 10 people at a friend’s house.”

Critics have dismissed the November 7 ballot as a charade to maintain the status quo, leaving military rule in civilian clothing. A quarter of the seats in Parliament are set aside for serving generals and most of the remainder seem certain to go to retired army officers or their cronies.

A few days on the campaign trail vividly illustrate those concerns and signal why the election is unlikely to usher in substantive near-term reforms for a country strategically nestled between China and India with rich natural resources.

Pro-democracy parties, none of which will contest more than 14% of seats, complain the two military-backed parties are using their power and connections to ensure the polls go their way and the opposition barely registers at campaign events.

The campaign trail is already well trodden by the heavy boots of the military, with former soldiers pushing their candidacy ahead of polls that two pro-junta parties are expected to sweep.

Tin Aye’s constituency is Naypyitaw, the isolated five-year-old capital home to the top brass of a regime that evicted him from his 18-acre farm six years ago.

His opposition is the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and the National Unity Party (NUP), two juggernauts packed with retired generals and incumbent government ministers.

Tin Aye’s nervous constituents know those parties represent the powerful junta accused by the West of oppressing its people and plundering the nation’s wealth and natural resources.

He hopes 60 000 students who graduated from the school he once ran as headmaster will rally behind him. “They don’t want to meet me for fear of reprisals,” he said. “But I believe they will vote for me out of love.”

Unfair advantage
Prime Minister Thein Sein has been accused of abusing his position to promote his USDP party during the opening of new hospitals, schools and roads.

Some locals in the former capital, Rangoon, say the mayor, Aung Thein Lin, another USDP candidate, has fulfilled a recent promise to start paving about 50 potholed roads with concrete.

But the work abruptly stopped.

“We hear that paving will be halted unless the USDP candidates win in our constituency,” said Maung Sein, owner of a bookshop in Pabedan township, who said he attended a meeting where local elders were instructed by the mayor to ensure the military-backed USDP candidates won.

Thu Wai, chairperson of the Democratic Party, said the USDP had many advantages over cash-strapped opponents.

Many opposition candidates cannot afford to access voter lists. Under rules drawn up by the junta, they must pay 20 kyat ($3) for the name of each constituent — a large sum in the country of 50-million people where more than 30% live in poverty, according to the Asian Development Bank.

Minimal opposition
In contrast, the USDP, which will contest all 1 158 constituencies, has clearly marked out its territory.

“We found stickers on buildings in towns and cities saying: ‘The people here are members of the USDP’,” he said. “People were too frightened to talk to our candidates.”

What’s missing from Burma’s election is any kind of viable opposition to the military’s proxies.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which won a landslide victory in 1990 polls the junta ignored, has boycotted the ballot and has been dissolved by the authorities as a result.

NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning figurehead of Burma’s fight for democracy, remains under house arrest and has instructed party members to shun the vote because of her detention and that of 2 200 other political prisoners.

Some NLD members disagree with Suu Kyi and have formed their own party, the National Democratic Force (NDF). But its resources are scant and campaigning is tightly restricted, with brochures, cheap posters and free T-shirts about the best it can offer.

“Our party representatives will become MPs if our party wins the favour of the people,” NDF chairperson Than Nyein said last week in the party’s one permitted television broadcast.

“At least we will have the right to express our voice.” — Reuters