The European Union and the United Nations have joined the United States, other nations and human rights organizations in questioning the election process announced last week by the military junta that controls Myanmar. The worry is well-founded. Previous elections there have been blatantly rigged or ignored, and all protests and calls for democracy have been ruthlessly quashed. Nothing in the junta’s Friday proclamation of Nov. 7 elections suggests a change in policy. It is, rather, a shameless attempt to reverse negative global concern about oppression in Myanmar.
There’s no other way to interpret the announcement. The junta says candidate lists for the November election have to be submitted by the end of August and that campaigning won’t be allowed to begin until the government announces it can begin. Those rules stifle all competition.
A bit more than two weeks is hardly enough time to select candidates, and mounting a campaign is nigh impossible given the junta’s control of the calendar. Moreover, Myanmar’s rulers refuse to release the country’s large numbers of political prisoners. That effectively eliminates opposition. It is hard to mount a campaign from jail.
It’s also difficult to direct or participate in a political campaign when a party leader is under strict house arrest. That’s the fate of Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s most popular anti-government figure and Nobel Prize winner for her efforts to bring democracy to her homeland. The junta has reason to keep her out of sight. It fears her.
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won 1990’s election. The victory proved hollow. The military prevented it from taking power. Subsequent crackdowns have frightened almost all political opponents so badly that they now refuse to publicly challenge the junta’s rule.
Suu Kyi clearly would do so, but can’t. Her continued imprisonment – the more correct term for the type of house arrest imposed on her – means she and her party would be severely handicapped in the upcoming election. Indeed, the only real power they have at the moment is to embarrass the junta in the eyes of the world and hope that forces it to conduct free and fair elections.
That’s the path chosen by the Nobel winner and her party. Their decision to boycott the November balloting is a smart move. The junta’s claim that the election is open to all is meaningless if the movement of its most viable opponent is effectively controlled by the state.
Myanmar’s rulers won’t care. They’ve crushed every popular and political uprising since taking power. They’ve allowed citizens to needlessly suffer and die in the wake of tsunamis and cyclones rather than allow outsiders who might question their authority into the country. Given that deplorable record, promoting a sham election is to be expected. Still, widespread concern about the process is a useful reminder that international legitimacy in such matters is earned – not given without question.