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YANGON: More than 1.1 million voters in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state will be disenfranchised in the upcoming national elections, according to data released by the electoral commission on Friday (October 16), a move that experts They warned that it could fuel even more conflict.
Civil leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) is expected to return to power in the November 8 elections, only the second since the country emerged from an outright military rule.
But with virtually all Rohingya Muslims stripped of citizenship and voting rights, many observers had already dismissed the polls as lacking credibility.
On Friday, the electoral commission said security reasons meant that the vote would not take place in areas with hundreds of thousands more people, including more than 800,000 in Rakhine.
More than half of the 600,000 Rohingya remaining in Myanmar live in Rakhine, bringing the total number of disenfranchised people in the state to more than 1.1 million, nearly two-thirds of the state’s population.
“Those areas in particular cannot guarantee the conditions to hold free and fair elections and that is why the elections are canceled,” the announcement published Friday night reads.
One million more stateless Rohingya languish in refugee camps in Bangladesh.
Arakan Army (AA) militants are locked in battle with the military on the northern outskirts of Rakhine as they fight for greater autonomy for Rakhine’s ethnic Buddhists.
The unrest has killed or injured hundreds and forced 150,000 from their homes since the civil war escalated in late 2018.
But the secretary of the Rakhine Arakan National Party (ANP), Tun Aung Kyaw, said the decision to cancel the vote was made for political reasons and not security.
“Most of the municipalities in Rakhine state where elections will not be held are areas where the ANP would definitely win, so it is a deliberate tactic,” he told AFP, adding that it was “discrimination. “against ethnic minorities.
The move could have a “great impact on Rakhine’s political dynamics,” said Sai Ye Kyaw Swar Myint, executive director of the monitoring organization People’s Alliance for Credible Elections.
Yangon analyst Richard Horsey agreed that this would likely tilt the election in Rakhine decisively in favor of Suu Kyi’s NLD.
“There is a very serious risk that this will lead to an increase in armed conflict and political violence in Rakhine,” he said.
This week, three NLD candidates were abducted by unknown gunmen in Rakhine and many suspected AA involvement.
In Friday’s announcement, the electoral commission also said that voting would be canceled in several other areas of Myanmar, notably in the conflict-ravaged Shan and Kachin states, but observers said this was largely expected.
