The ruling military junta in Burma (officially Myanmar) allowed the first election since 1990 on Sunday, Nov. 7. Initial results reports indicate that the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party is winning by a landslide, capturing the vast majority of the seats in the newly created parliament. Many observers and international governments have condemned the election as fraudulent.
In response, members of Burma’s oppressed ethnic groups have attacked government troops and commandeered government buildings in southern Burma. The rebels seem to be a splinter group of the usually pro-junta Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, ISA Intel reported.
The army seized control of Burma in 1962, and has since amassed a record of human rights abuses, mostly aimed at Burma’s ethnic minorities, which make up 40 percent of the population.
Minority ethnic groups fear the election is a tool to legitimize the military-backed government, further disenfranchising them.
Election Widely Considered Neither Free nor Fair
Human rights groups and many governments, including the United States, consider the elections to be a sham.
U.S. president Barack Obama called the elections “anything but free and fair,” in a White House transcript of a speech at St. Xavier College in Mumbai, India on Sunday.
“For too long the people of Burma have been denied the right to determine their own destiny,” he said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said the “flawed elections … once again expose the abuses of the military junta and it’s heartbreaking because the people of Burma deserve so much better,” in a State Department transcript of a speech in Australia.
Somsri Han-Anuntasuk, director of the Asian Network for Free Elections Foundation, was equally critical. “This election is a joke,” he told Globalpost.com. “There are many layers of cheating and irregularity.”
Election monitors operating secretly inside the country said that many Burmese were given ballots pre-marked with votes for the junta’s party, according to Globalpost.
In some 3,400 villages, comprising about five percent of the electorate, voting was disallowed, according to ALTSEAN, a human rights and democracy group. The group accuses regime officials of harassing, intimidating and coercing non-junta candidates and their supporters, and also of engaging in “vote buying schemes.”
1990 Election Nullified After Suu Kyi Win
Burma’s last elections, held in 1990, gave an overwhelming victory to pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The military immediately annulled the elections and imprisoned Suu Kyi in her home, where she has spent a cumulative 15 years out of the last 20 years.
Suu Kyi’s latest sentence is due to expire Saturday. Her lawyer, Nyan Win, told AP he believes she will be released instead of rearrested. "We are making plans for a welcoming ceremony," he told AP.
One of Suu Kyi’s sons, 23-year-old Kris Aris, was less optimistic. Aris applied for a visa to enter Burma to see his mother for the first time in 10 years. He told AP he had "not too much hope. But there's always a little bit of hope.”
Aris described the elections as "a load of rubbish," according to AP.
