Updated: November 7, 2020 12:21:09 pm
Aung San Suu Kyi will cast her advance vote on October 29 in Naypitaw. (AP)
Myanmar will vote on November 8 in an election that is seen as a test of the country’s leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi over the past five years. In the last elections of 2015, the National League for Democracy led by Suu Kyi won a landslide victory.
The elections are for the upper and lower houses of the national Parliament, the House of Nationalities and the House of Representatives respectively, as well as for the assemblies of the seven states and seven regions of Myanmar, a total of 1,171 seats. The president is elected by the bicameral national Parliament. The chief ministers of the states and regions are appointed by the president.
The elections will take place in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the continuing Rohingya crisis, a nationalist Buddhist resurgence, and an assertion of an army running the country alongside the elected civilian government in a hybrid system.
Rohingya and the vote
Between 7 and 8 lakhs of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh when the army began an offensive against a suspected terrorist group in 2017 in Rakhine province, home to this Muslim minority group. The Army’s action was backed by Suu Kyi and her government. The refugees now live in what has been described as the “world’s largest refugee camp” in Cox’s Bazar. Bangladesh wants Myanmar to get them back, but Myanmar, which maintains that the Rohingya are not “indigenous” and calls them Bengalis (the word Rohingya is not officially recognized), is unwilling to do so.
In past elections, the Rohingya have voted. This time, they will be almost completely excluded from the elections. Many Rohingya candidates were rejected during the nominations. Last month, the Myanmar Electoral Commission said that, for security reasons, elections would not be held in many areas of Rakhine. This means that even the 600,000 Rohingya who remain in Myanmar will not be able to vote. Neither will the anti-Suu Kyi Rakhine Buddhists, who allege that political motives are behind the cancellation of the elections.
Supporters wearing jerseys with National League for Democracy (NLD) logos of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi cheer from a tricycle as they participate in the last day of campaigning for the November 8 elections on Friday, November 6, 2020 in Data Township, Yangon. (AP Photo / Thein Zaw)
NLD, army, Buddhist claim
This is Myanmar’s third election under the 2008 military-drafted Constitution, part of its “roadmap to democracy.” The NLD had boycotted the first elections in 2010, when Suu Kyi was still under house arrest. The junta put forward candidates for proxy through the Union, Solidarity and Development Party and won the majority of seats. Following the release of Suu Kyi after the elections, the junta, under international pressure, eased restrictions on political and civil society activity and allowed independent media. Over the next five years, investments poured in. The NLD’s participation in the 2012 by-elections gave legitimacy to the board’s reforms. The first credible elections in 2015 were swept away by Suu Kyi, then a global icon of democracy.
This time, the NLD bears the burden of the matter. Suu Kyi had come with the promise of completing the transition to democracy through the reform of the Constitution imposed by the junta, with almost irreversible wording that consolidated the role of the Army in the government of the country: the military obtained 25% representation in both Houses of Parliament, and in all state / regional assemblies, by nomination; USDP continues to act as military representative; the army, known as Tatmadaw, retains portfolios such as Defense and Internal Security; and it can declare an emergency at any time and take over the running of the country. 📣 Express Explained is now on Telegram
There was tension in the civil-military balance earlier this week after the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, expressed dissatisfaction with the way the Election Commission was conducting the polls, and in an interview with a local medium. outlet, left open the question of whether the Army would accept the election results. A government spokesman said the comments violated the Constitution.
Suu Kyi’s party made efforts to push back the military until 2019, but the military representatives in Parliament blocked them. She herself is a victim of the Constitution: by virtue of having married a foreign citizen, she cannot become president. Now she is known as Councilor of State, but her party accepts her as an authority superior to the president. At the same time, their attempts to reach a peace agreement with more than twenty armed ethnic groups aligned against the state have not yet been successful. The last meeting of the Union for Peace Conference, the 21st century Panglong (a reference to the 1947 Panglong accord), was held in August. The NLD believes that a federal settlement will remain elusive as long as the Army is powerful.
Supporters of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) march on pedal tricycles during an election campaign for the upcoming general elections on November 8, Thursday, November 5, 2020, in Yangon, Myanmar. (AP Photo / Thein Zaw)
But Suu Kyi has not put pressure on the military as her Pakistani counterparts have in the past. He once described the generals at the Tatmadaw as “quite nice”, and last year he defended the Army in person at the International Court of Justice in The Hague against allegations of rape, arson and mass murder in Rakhine.
A resurgent Buddhist nationalism, inspired and inspiring similar sentiments in Sri Lanka, has also been evident in the last five years. On November 2, an aggressive monk known for his racist and communal speeches turned himself in to police who sought to arrest him for more than a year for statements he made calling on the army to overthrow the Suu Kyi government and calling her by objectionable names. In 2015, he asked people to vote for the military-backed USDP against Suu Kyi.
However, Suu Kyi is still as popular as she was five years ago and is expected to lead her party to victory again. His defiance of international censorship over the Rohingya exodus and calls to regain his Nobel Peace Prize appear to have reinforced his status as a national icon among Bamar’s Buddhist majority.
Where India meets China
It has also pushed Suu Kyi into the arms of China, which has been involved in a number of infrastructure projects in Myanmar, and has courted her and the NLD since 2015, separate from their continued close relationships with the military.
Beijing prepared the red carpet for Suu Kyi when she visited in 2016. In January 2020, President Xi Jinping was a high-value guest in Naypidaw, with fighter jets from the Myanmar Air Force escorting Xi’s plane as it landed in the capital.
In an opinion piece in Myanmar’s state newspaper, Xi wrote that China would support Myanmar in “safeguarding its legitimate rights and interests and national dignity.” Just as it was Sri Lanka’s only ally during the post-war canine days, China is now Myanmar’s main ally in a world whose fervor for Suu Kyi has long cooled.
During the visit, no new infrastructure projects were signed, but the two sides reaffirmed their support to accelerate the “China-Myanmar Economic Corridor”, which includes a high-speed railway between industrial zones within the country with connections to the Chinese border. and an ambitious $ 1.3 billion deepwater port at Kyaukphyu in central Rakhine, which will provide Beijing with a gateway to the Indian Ocean, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.
Any push against China in Myanmar now comes from restless regions where large infrastructure projects threaten to displace people, as in 2011 in Kachin, where a year after Suu Kyi’s release, protests forced the cancellation of a Chinese dam. 6,000 MW Myistone.
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“After the elections, the trajectory of China-Myanmar relations will not change much, regardless of the outcome of the elections. China will always be a reliable partner of Myanmar and is ready to play a constructive role in Myanmar’s peace and development process, “wrote a columnist in Global Times, a Chinese state media outlet.
New Delhi has maintained cordial relations with both Suu Kyi and the Myanmar military. While Buddhism provides a cultural link, and the Modi government has made common cause with the Myanmar government on the Rohingya issue, India does not have deep pockets for Chinese-style infrastructure projects. India is working on two key infrastructure projects in Myanmar: a trilateral highway between India-Myanmar and Thailand, and the Kaladan multimodal transit project that aims to connect mainland India with the northeastern landlocked states via Myanmar. A port in Sittwe and an inland waterway are part of this project.
© The Indian Express (P) Ltd
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