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Parliamentary elections were held in Myanmar on Sunday, the second since the end of the military regime in 2011. The results have not yet been released, but a major victory is expected for the National League for Democracy, the ruling party led by Aung. San Suu Kyi has been accused in recent years of implementing particularly discriminatory policies towards the country’s ethnic minorities, especially the Rohingya, considered victims of genocide. Sunday’s elections were seen as a kind of referendum on the political transition to democracy, which began in 2011 and which still appears to be a long way from completion.
Turnout was very high: there are no official figures yet, but during all voting hours there were long lines at polling stations, despite the fear of the spread of the coronavirus: queues formed so much in Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar, and in Mandalay, further north, from where many foreign tourists depart to visit the famous Valley of the Temples in Bagan.
Queue at a polling station in Yangon, Myanmar (AP Photo / Thein Zaw)
There are 87 political parties vying for seats in parliament. The main opponent of the National League for Democracy is the Union, Solidarity and Development Party, linked to the military, which despite the transition to a civilian government has never left power. Several ethnic parties also appeared, that is, representatives of the different ethnic groups in the country, although many others were excluded (in Myanmar a third of the population belongs to ethnic groups other than the Bamar ethnic group, the dominant one); and parties born from Suu Kyi’s former allies, who for various reasons in recent years had preferred to go alone.
Despite the presence of many parties, one must consider that a quarter of the seats are reserved for the military, according to the controversial 2008 Constitution drawn up when the military junta was still in power.
Furthermore, the government led by the National League for Democracy has been strongly criticized for excluding various political forces from electoral lists, for effectively preventing 1.5 million non-Bamarista voters from voting (out of an electorate of 37 million people) and for canceling elections in two particularly troubled states, Shan and Kachin. Similar accusations are not new to Suu Kyi’s party, which despite being founded to oppose the military regime, over the years has adopted increasingly authoritarian and repressive modes of government. Suu Kyi herself, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, appears today to have lost all her international credibility due to the very violent persecution against the Rohingya carried out by the Burmese army.
Supporters of the National League for Democracy on the final day of the election campaign in Yangon, Myanmar (AP Photo / Thein Zaw)
The Rohingya have been completely excluded from the electoral process. The right to vote was denied them after the 2015 elections: since then more than 740,000 Rohingya have been forced to leave and take refuge in neighboring Bangladesh, where in the vast majority of cases they live in refugee camps in very poor conditions. terms. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya still have no rights in Rakhine State in western Myanmar.
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But Ei Thinzar Maung, a 26-year-old activist from the Democratic Party for a New Society (federalist, social-democratic and opposed to the presence of the military in government), told the New York Times: “During this democratic period, the state of democracy in Myanmar has regressed. We hoped it would continue ”. It is not yet known what her party was like, but it is known that Ma Ei Thinzar Maung was not elected: her seat was won by a candidate from the ruling party.
Press conference by Zaw Min Tun, Vice Chairman of the Army Information Committee (AP Photo / Aung Shine Oo)
In Myanmar, the army ruled for half a century. They took power in 1962, with a coup, while the first elections were held only in 1990: they were won by Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, but the military ignored the result and prevented the formation of a civilian government. In 2010 new elections were held, which however did not leave room for the opposition, who decided to boycott them. The first elections with real competition were organized in 2015: the National League for Democracy won, and this time the military will agree to share power with civilians and initiate a democratic transition.
However, in recent years many of the hopes placed on nascent democracy have been weakened. The form of government of the National League for Democracy recalled in several respects the military regime of previous decades, and the genocide against the Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority, attracted much criticism from the international community, which had placed great trust in Aung. Saint Suu Kyi. The next few months could be particularly difficult for Myanmar, which is experiencing an increase in daily new coronavirus infections, highly significant considering that the country has one of the worst health systems in the world.
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