 The upcoming election reflects the the junta's sterile new city
Burma's new capital city lies about 10 hours' drive – or a short,
white-knuckled flight on an ageing Fokker-27 – from Rangoon, the
country's largest city and former capital. A vast, empty plain of
snaking arterial roads and low-density development, Naypyidaw is
unlikely to experience anything approaching the so-called "Saffron
Revolution" that brought central Rangoon to a standstill in 2007.
For
one thing, there is no obvious city center or public space of any sort.
Hotels, residential areas and government buildings are quarantined in
designated "zones" separated by miles of six-lane highways, cutting
swathes through tracts of untouched jungle. The only visual point of
reference – and then, only at night – is the golden inverted cone of
the Uppatasanti Pagoda, a life-size replica of the hallowed Shwedagon
Pagoda in Rangoon.
As Burma prepares to go to the polls later
this year as part of the military government's much-touted "roadmap to
democracy," the view from Naypyidaw appears grim. When the country's
ruling generals moved the capital north in 2005, some observers saw it
as a defensive maneuver, a move into strategic isolation designed to
limit the threat of popular upheaval. Siddharth Varadarajan, a
journalist at The Hindu, described Naypyidaw as "the ultimate insurance
against regime change, a masterpiece of planning designed to defeat any
putative ‘colour revolution' – not by tanks and water cannons, but by
geometry and cartography".
The approach of the elections, which
many expect to fall on the auspicious date of October 10 (10-10-2010),
has raised some hopes of a democratic opening for the isolated country.
One observer said recently that the creation of new legislative bodies,
however constrained, will "inadvertently" grant citizens the
opportunity to influence decision-making.
The signs so far,
however, have vindicated the pessimists. Despite reports that election
campaigning has already begun in Karen State, the epicentre of a
decades-long ethnic Karen insurgency, the rules remain weighted heavily
towards the junta. Five election laws promulgated earlier this month
stipulate that 110 of the 440 seats in a proposed House of
Representatives will be reserved for military representatives and that
56 in the 224-member House of Nationalities will be chosen by the head
of the army, Senior General Than Shwe.
A Political Party
Registration Law also includes provisions barring democracy icon Aung
San Suu Kyi from participation in the election – and possibly even from
membership in the National League of Democracy (NLD), the party she led
to a landslide victory in elections in 1990. The laws also ban
prisoners from being members of political parties, effectively barring
the participation of over 2,000 people jailed on politically motivated
charges, including several senior NLD members. Other laws state that a
five-member Election Commission, appointed by the junta, will have
final say over election results, presaging a repeat of the 1990 poll,
when the military simply refused to acknowledge the NLD's victory.
On
March 8, United States Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs
P.J. Crowley said Washington was "troubled" by the decision to exclude
Suu Kyi from the process.
"This is a step in the wrong
direction," Crowley told reporters in Washington. "The political party
registration law makes a mockery of the democratic process and ensures
that the upcoming elections will be devoid of credibility."
Human
Rights Watch was less equivocal. "The new law's assault on opposition
parties is sadly predictable," said Brad Adams, the Asia director at
Human Rights Watch said in a statement March 10. "It continues the sham
political process that is aimed at creating the appearance of civilian
rule with a military spine." Philippine Foreign Secretary Alberto
Romulo told The Associated Press that an election without Suu Kyi would
be a "farce."
Whatever the future of "discipline flourishing
genuine multi-party democracy", as the regime refers to it, the
isolated new capital may also suggest that the regime is also following
a roadmap back into Burma's past, away from the promise of an open,
democratic future. Michael Aung-Thwin, a Professor of Asian Studies at
the University of Hawaii at Manoa, says the relocation of the capital
is seen by the junta as a move back into the historical, cultural and
geographic heart of Burma. Naypyidaw lies close to – and has all but
absorbed – the township of Pyinmana, which lies at the historical heart
of the country. In relocating the capital from Rangoon, which served as
the capital under British rule, Aung-Thwin suggests the move represents
a concerted rejection of Burma's colonial past.
Sean Turnell, an
Associate Professor of Economics at Macquarie University in Sydney,
says that the strategic motivation for the relocation, as well as its
cost – the government "could not have got much change out of US$1
billion," he says – also bodes ill for the junta's commitment to
openness. "Given that much of the motivation [for the relocation]
extends from a certain ‘siege mentality', it's illustrative that we
must regard the upcoming elections, and other moves, with a great deal
of scepticism," he said.
Reports from inside Burma indicate that
many citizens have adopted similar attitudes. One woman quoted in the
Irrawaddy news magazine, run by Burmese exiles in Chiang Mai, Thailand,
rejected the prospect of fair elections outright.
"I don't
even want to talk about the election," she told reporters. "However we
vote, [the regime] will do whatever they want." Most of the 300 people
informally polled by reporters from the magazine expressed similar
views.
Burma's ethnic minority "problem" – a perennial challenge
since independence – has also been thrown off balance by recent
tensions along the Sino-Burmese border. After signing ceasefire
agreements with Rangoon from the late 1980s onwards, many ethnic
separatist groups were given the right to retain their arms and formed
de facto autonomous statelets in outlying parts of the country. But
over the past year, the government has been pressing ethnic ceasefire
groups to join a unified Border Guard Force (BGF) under government
control in time for this year's election, prompting fears of renewed
fighting.
In August, ethnic forces in Kokang Special Region, a
part of Burma's Shan State, clashed with government troops, driving
thousands of refugees over the border into Yunnan province in China. A
deadline for ethnic armies to join the BGF passed on March 15; just a
few days later reports surfaced of clashes between government troops
and an ethnic Shan armies elsewhere in Shan State. Some have even
speculated that the election will be delayed until the BGF issue is
resolved.
It might be too soon to say with certainty what a
putative "democracy with Burmese characteristics" will boil down to in
practice, but the signs so far are not especially promising.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
You forget to mention the bunker to make TS look's liker Hitler.
It'salways the same story the bad TS and the good ASSK. her party or maiby her former parti doesn't like much change their leaders old now so old but... and not realy representative of a young country but elected long ago...)
What's a pity TS is really a bad guy but are the general in Thailand and Cambodia much better ?
So when Asia sentinel will make a report like Hun Sen, Than Shwe so far... so close...