A look at Myanmar’s election and Aung San Suu Kyi’s expected victory

YANGON: Myanmar will hold national and state elections on Sunday (November 8) in which the National League for Democracy party, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, will seek to stay in power.

Here’s a closer look at the vote:

THE BASICS

More than 37 million of Myanmar’s 56 million people are eligible to vote. More than 90 parties are running candidates for seats in the upper and lower houses of Parliament.

The NLD’s landslide victory in the last elections of 2015 came after more than five decades of military or military-led rule. Those elections were considered largely free and fair with one major exception: The 2008 army-drafted constitution automatically grants the military 25 percent of seats in Parliament, enough to block constitutional changes. That condition remains true.

Eclipsing the polls is the coronavirus and restrictions to contain it, which are likely to reduce participation despite the government’s plans for social distancing and other safety measures.

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THE FAVORITE

Aung San Suu Kyi’s party is highly favored to win again, although probably with a small majority. Aung San Suu Kyi is by far the most popular politician in the country, and the NLD has a strong national network, strengthened by holding the levers of state power.

However, the NLD has been criticized for its lack of vision and for adopting some of the more authoritarian methods of its military predecessors, especially targeting critics through the courts.

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THE COMPETITORS

Aung San Suu Kyi’s party has lost the cooperation of many ethnic minority parties, which are popular in their border territories. In 2015, those parties were unspoken allies of the NLD and agreed not to compete strongly where splitting the vote could give victory to the military-backed Union, Solidarity and Development Party, or USDP.

The failure of Aung San Suu Kyi to reach an agreement that gives ethnic minorities the greater political autonomy they have sought for decades has disenchanted them, and this year they will work against the NLD rather than with it. There are about 60 small ethnic parties.

The main opposition, the USDP, was founded as a representative of the military and, again, is the strongest competitor to the NLD. It is well funded and well organized. It is unclear whether voters still see him tainted by his association with previous military regimes.

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PROBLEMS

To a large extent, the polls are seen as a referendum on Aung San Suu Kyi’s five years in power, just as the 2015 elections were seen as a judgment on the military rule.

There has been economic growth, but it benefited a small part of the population in one of the poorest countries in the region and did not meet popular expectations.

Not only were ethnic minority groups disappointed by Aung San Suu Kyi’s inability to grant them greater autonomy, but in the western state of Rakhine, the well-trained and well-armed Arakan Army, a group that claims to represent the Buddhist ethnic group Rakhine, has become the biggest military threat in years.

The cancellation of voting by the Electoral Commission in some areas where parties critical of the government were sure to win seats has drawn strong criticism. The measure is estimated to have deprived more than 1 million people of their rights. Critics have accused the Election Commission of conspiring to comply with the NLD’s orders.

The issue that receives the most worldwide attention, the oppression of the Rohingya Muslim minority, is not a huge electoral problem, except for anti-Muslim politicians. A brutal 2017 counterinsurgency campaign led some 740,000 Rohingya to flee across the border into Bangladesh, but they have long faced systematic discrimination that denies them citizenship and the right to vote.