By-elections in Myanmar

The Lady of all landslides

Aung San Suu Kyi’s win is a humiliation for the army. Will it now turn nasty?

Apr 7th 2012 | YANGON| from the print edition

THE boisterous, joyful scenes throughout the evening of April 1st outside the headquarters in Yangon of the National League for Democracy (NLD) said it all. Myanmar’s main opposition party was on course for a huge victory in the day’s historic by-elections. Every ten minutes or so news of yet another unfeasibly good result would be posted up on a digital display screen facing the street, provoking even more ecstatic cheering from the huge crowd gathered outside. These were extraordinary scenes in a country that just over a year ago was a hushed and fearful military dictatorship.

Over the following days the government confirmed the NLD’s landslide. The party contested 44 of the 45 seats on offer to the federal parliament in Naypyidaw. These were the first elections it had taken part in since 1990, and it won 43 of them (the government’s single win came in a constituency where the NLD candidate was disqualified). The result surpassed the party’s most optimistic expectations. In some seats they seem to have won over 90% of the vote, including in a hardscrabble constituency on the edge of the capital, where hardly a vote was cast against Aung San Suu Kyi.

The NLD’s triumph spells humiliation for the regime. Support for the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), the proxy for an army that has ruled the country since 1962, was all but wiped out in these constituencies. It could not even win a seat in the government’s own backyard. Four were up for grabs in the regime’s gaudy capital of Naypyidaw, where perhaps half the voters are directly employed by the government. They had been promised extra goodies to support the USDP. But still, they voted for the NLD.

The victory is more symbolic than practical. The NLD won only 6% of the 650-odd seats in parliament. Its participation will make little legislative difference, and the army remains very much in charge. One NLD leader, Tin Oo, hopes that the mere presence of Miss Suu Kyi in parliament will shake things up, and that her oratory will change some minds. Maybe, but the 2008 constitution reserves a quarter of the seats for army-appointed MPs who know exactly where to take their orders from.

Rather, it is to the 2015 general election that everyone is now looking. The previous vote, in late 2010, was heavily rigged in favour of the USDP, which won most of the seats, if only because the NLD boycotted the poll. Were Sunday’s by-election results repeated at the national level, the USDP would be annihilated, reduced to a parliamentary rump of its unelected military MPs. At that point, the game would pretty much be up for the army. The NLD and opposition parties from the areas of the ethnic Karen, Kachin and others would have a majority and Miss Suu Kyi, perhaps, would be president.

Though the NLD can hardly wait for that day, the prospect must deeply worry the generals and their satraps. Their reaction to these by-elections will thus be watched closely over the coming weeks. The generals may well have wanted Miss Suu Kyi to take up a seat in parliament, in order to reflect well on the reform process begun by President Thein Sein. But their own ritual humiliation was not part of the plan. They have very publicly been stripped of all legitimacy.

Mid-ranking officers in Naypyidaw are said to be “angry”. The worry is that they will now turn against Mr Thein Sein, who they may fear is leading them to political oblivion. Some factions of the army were never happy with the reform programme in the first place, let alone with its hectic pace. Defeat in by-elections could provide them with the pretext to try to stall further reforms, or maybe even to turn back the clock. Mr Thein Sein called the by-elections “successful”, and some army officers hope that Myanmar will follow Indonesia’s example a dozen years ago and take the path towards democracy. But diplomats and other foreign observers admit that the army is a closed book to outsiders.

That is why the euphoria is tinged with danger. Myanmar is entering a decisive phase in its political transition. The diehards in the army’s higher command now face having quickly to come to terms with a process that, for the first time, looks as if it is slipping beyond their control. Or they will have to act while they still can.

Miss Suu Kyi, modest in victory, has helped. She insisted her supporters not indulge in triumphalism. But now it is up to the officers whether Myanmar is truly to enjoy the “new era” Miss Suu Kyi proclaimed the dayafter her triumph. Everyone knows where she now stands: just outside the presidential palace.

from the print edition | Asia

·         Recommended

·         7

·         Submit to reddit

·         inShare0

Be the first to comment

Want more? Subscribe to The Economist and get the week's most relevant news and analysis.

同時參考這篇作回應評語

Myanmar's by-elections

The Lady of all landslides?

Apr 2nd 2012, 9:39 by R.C. | YANGON

THE boisterous, joyful scenes outside the headquarters of the National League for Democracy (NLD) throughout the evening of April 1st said it all: Myanmar’s main opposition party looks to be on course for a big victory, a landslide even, in the country’s historic by-elections. Every ten minutes or so news of yet another extraordinary result would be posted up on a giant digital screen facing the street, provoking even more ecstatic cheering from the huge crowd gathered outside. These are intoxicating scenes in a country that just over a year ago was a quiet, fearful military dictatorship.

The NLD had been contesting 44 of the 45 seats on offer in the federal parliament in Naypyidaw, the first elections it had taken part in since 1990. After such a long absence from the polls, nobody was really sure how the elections would go (the NLD boycotted the last general election two years ago). But although official results will not be known for a few days, it is already fairly obvious that the proxy-party of the ruling military government, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), has been humiliated.

Take Aung San Suu Kyi herself. The NLD leader stood for a seat, Kawhmu township, just outside Yangon, where the party claims that she got 99% of the vote and won at 128 out of 129 polling booths. NLD officials were also claiming last night that they had won all 11 seats where all the votes had been counted—the polls shut at 4pm. And in five of those seats, they had won 90% of the vote. On these sorts of projections the NLD could well win all 44 seats it fought, or at least 40, ahead even of its more optimistic forecasts. NLD leaders I spoke with last week had been hoping to win about two-thirds of the seats.

Significantly, the NLD even claimed to be winning in government strongholds such as Naypyidaw, the gilded cage of a purpose-built capital five hours' drive north of Yangon. Here four seats were being contested, and probably over half of the voters were directly employed by the USDP government. They had also been promised extra goodies to vote for the USDP. Even in Naypyidaw the NLD claims to have won three seats, and one party official tabulating results said late on April 1st that the NLD had won all four. If true, that would really deal a body-blow to any remaining claims to legitimacy by the USDP government.

However, we will have to wait for the official results to see whether the NLD’s forecasts turn out to be true—and also to see how the government reacts. After all, we have been down this road before. In a general election in 1990 the NLD won an overwhelming majority of seats, only to be prevented by the military government from ever taking them up. So people here are naturally, justifiably cautious.

Certainly, on the morning after in Yangon there was not any palpable sense that the political landscape had changed forever. It was more an atmosphere of business as usual. And anyway, everyone knows that even if the NLD does win 44 seats, it won’t be able to make much practical, legislative difference in a chamber of 650-odd parliamentarians still heavily dominated by the USDP. It’s the 2015 general election, however, that people will now be really looking forward to.

There are also many accounts of voting irregularities and rigging to take account of. These will have to be looked into, and might form the basis for legal challenges. For example, many people complained that they could not vote because their names were not on the electoral rolls at the polling stations.

More intriguing, however, were the reports from all around the country that wax had been fixed on the NLD box on the ballot paper, making it hard for voters to put a clear tick in the box. The idea being, presumably, that a lot of scratching to write a tick would disfigure, and thus invalidate, the ballot paper. Certainly, a couple of furious people whom I spoke to at polling stations complained of this, and said that when they asked for a new ballot paper they were told there were none spare.

On the one hand, if the NLD won by a landslide despite these sorts of shenanigans, that would be all the more remarkable. On the other hand, the story of the mysterious waxed boxes has yet to be verified independently; we could not, of course, go into the polling booths to run our fingers over the wax. Maybe it was just lousy paper? But then how come nobody reported wax in the USDP boxes? Maybe…because nobody voted for the USDP!

The Lady of all landslides

Apr 7th 2012, 08:41

Listening to the soundtrack “The Lady” directed by French Luc Besson while watching the outcome of this by-election, no one questions the bravery of this lady, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, especially while talking about her contribution to the democratic exercises in Myanmar (Burma). After the peaceful agreement by Thein Sein, National League for Democracy (NLD), co-founded by her and U Kyi Maung, can have an opening space gaining more opportunities for joining politics, including using resources to practice the democracy; moreover, the honour of the peacock, ancient Myanmar, and the merit of her father have her achieve the significant glory in Southeastern Asia.

The last action of her making her under house arrest was in May, 2003 by Thein Sein’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), accompanying the massive crackdown on NLD’s pro-democracy members after one-year free time had happened. In Aug, 2008 United Nation’s authorized representative visited her taking a photo, once reported by the Economist, also delivering the protest against Thein Sein’s behaviour of illegal detain which disobeyed both Burma’s and international law. Many times during the past two years, some countries pressured on Naypyidaw for the fairly free nation to communicate and trade with, including India, China and America signing in the trade agreement about energy use with Naypyidaw.

From the Peter Popham’s book, “The Lady and The Peacock”, depicted this Nobel Peace Laureate from her origin in British St. Hugh’s college of Oxford University and India’s New Delhi to her joining the politics in motherland in late 1980s. Last December, I bumped into this book in Taipei 101’s Page One, feeling sorrowfully and the time passing by too soon after I first contacted her in 2004. In this book, I saw both ecstatic and tragic incidents taking turns for several times, but this lady never gives up her determination and keep her resolution to make people live in her lovely land far away from fear. The non-stop action finally persuade these military junta to open the political turnaround.

This time, NLD really wins landslide victory, called the upcoming “new era” by this lady. In addition, Thein Sein expressed the cooperative willing to political work with NLD, according to his sayings of the first media interview by Japan’s NHK since the outcome of election in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh on April 4th. At the same date, American Secretary of State Hilary Clinton resolved some sanction because of Burma’s walking toward democratic side. Yesterday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei in public put forward the welcome to “such statements of partial lifting of sanctions” and call on all parties concerned to completely lift their sanctions against Myanmar.

But the above does mean the start of final chapter of Myanmar’s dictatorship? And also mean America tends to support this lady? Or another one, that this military junta, Thein Sein or the potential presidential candidate in 2015, Lower House speaker Shwe Mann, can continuously keep his high power in Myanmar forever if only holding election and elected by Burmese? Just like Kuomintang’s Ma Ying-Jeou in Taiwan against democracy plus declining Beijing’s leadership?

Basically, her freedom and words from her should be ensured for the better normalizing Burma. And then, considering the Burma’s conflict with China, India and Thailand, many times this general, Thein Sein, cannot efficiently control those surroundings, especially the nervous situation with China in Oct. 2009. He fell behind further than this lady about public charisma. If Burma wants to recover the position to return to the No.1 rice output nation in the world as the beginning of 20th century, the process of transformation from economy to politics inevitably happens with foreigner intervention, especially when it comes to India and China’s desperate for the industrial source of energy.

As the poem prevailing, “Mandalay will be a pile of ashes, Rangoon will be a pile of trash, Naypyidaw will be a pile of bones. ”, although Thein Sein has bloody suppressed the Buddhist monks and intelligence for several times, he nowadays seems to borrow the experience of the lady’s father, Burma’s hero Aung San, who once battled against Japanese Army in Naypyidaw during the second world war, struggling for the interior peaceful unity rather than a brutal tyranny. Of course, on my opinion, if this lady should be elected - and of course sooner is better - as president in 2015, the advantages for Burmese and China will accompany hugely with the clear law system and principles.

    Recommended

    26

    Report

    Permalink

筆者回了一名住在美國的緬甸留學生，因為他覺得文章看不太懂，也不是很喜歡筆者看緬甸政治觀點

The Lady of all landslides

Apr 9th 2012, 10:28

This is a very good question and you put forward this kind of sentence. First, I answer you back about this sentence. I wrote this one that originated from NHK world’s release documents on NHK’s official website, because NHK is the first media that interviewed Thein Sein after Burma’s by-election. I just adjusted a few words for the reader’s convenience, never using Google’s translator (you can try this terrible function by posting this article in order to prove whether you said right or not). And if you still want me to make only simple sentence like murmur, very sorry, it’s hard for me to change my locution. Moreover, I can tell you that my writing style derives, or is learnt, from Financial Times, Bloomberg and NHK World. You needn’t watch my articles if having no interest.

Second, anyone who posts their article on this website can get the 5000 characters’ room. No one says that there needs points but the vision of contention. Instead, it is the most important that try to write your expression sentence after sentence. And then, make good use of the paragraph which also can make clear of the contention. So I never use ideology to express my opinion. Almost of my posts, found on Economist website and concerned of China Study, Japan’s politics, Asian business with readers as well as the Economist editors, were written by these steps.

    Recommended

    12

    Report

    Permalink

時光荏苒，翁山蘇姬從2010年11月13日重獲自由，到2016年3月全國民主聯盟經直選產生首任總統廷覺（Htin Kyaw），而掌握緬甸政治並擔任國務資政兼外長，又到了溫敏（Win Myint）成功獲選為新總統。在羅興亞人的問題上，翁山蘇姬從亞洲人權民主的象徵到千夫所指的幫兇，也幾番了眾人對於民主政治真諦的疑惑。

當時的確國際間掀起一陣翁山蘇姬的浪潮，舉國充滿希望，比較三個「首都」：Mandalay will be a pile of ashes, Rangoon will be a pile of trash, Naypyidaw will be a pile of bones. 如盧貝松的電影，由楊紫瓊主演的「The Lady」及Peter Popham 的授權傳記 “The Lady and The Peacock”，從作者和一名緬甸仰光的工科大學畢業但是找不到工作數年而只能開計程車的寒喧講起，很像Thomas L. Friedman在世界是平的開頭所開始的。緬甸共和國的國父翁山就是她的父親，她有英國的倫敦大學亞非學院的博士學歷及京都大學的講座教授經驗，研究的是西藏問題及西藏語言文化。從43歲8888民主運動開始主導緬甸艱難的民主化，歷經三度軟禁，2008年的8月經濟學人曾經刊出聯合國高級事務專員Ibrahim Gambari在3月會面的照片，但當時軍政府仍然以因翁山蘇姬和一名美國人直接往來違反禁令而延長羈押。這個民主轉型的經驗很寶貴及其經濟自由化也帶給緬甸高速的發展，雖然國外輿論仍然反對其對羅興亞人的問題的態度，國內的高支持度和靠攏中國的舉動仍然讓政權持續不墜，也不因如Shan及Kachin邦的分合問題而在國家團結上有所鬆動。

在2016 Apr. 2當期的經濟學人雜誌「Myanmar's Economy」的筆者在回文時有提到中國對緬甸經濟影響的始末。詳見：The Burma road Apr 8th 2016, 10:01

*附6月5日的文章一篇

Aung San Suu Kyi

Just a glimpse

Jun 5th 2012, 2:31 by T.F. | MAE LA

ADORING throngs of expatriated Burmese nationals (and NGO staffers) lined kilometres of the airport road to welcome Aung San Suu Kyi to the border town of Mae Sot. On the last day of Miss Suu Kyi’s landmark visit to Thailand, her first trip abroad in 24 years, she was escorted by tight security provided by Thailand’s army and police. From the tarmac her convoy was whisked past the cheering supporters to Mae La, the area’s largest refugee camp. More than 45,000 shelter here, most of them ethnic Karen who have fled war and repression in neighbouring Myanmar.

Inside the Mae La camp, a maze of bamboo and thatched huts only 10 kilometres from the border with Myanmar, Miss Suu Kyi, an icon for her country’s democracy movement, told the cheering masses that Myanmar’s refugees are not forgotten. She said she hopes that conditions back in Burma, as she calls the place, will permit them to return in the not-too-distant future.

The Thai authorities had already decided to change Miss Suu Kyi’s schedule, pruning it severely. She met only a few camp officials and representatives of the Karens’ political groups. No microphones were allowed, and no loudspeakers. The Lady, as she is popularly known, had to stand on a plastic chair and shout to be heard. Many of the 1,000 refugees who were permitted to attend the little football-pitch assembly could scarcely hear a thing she said. At one point a few of the refugees were just able to make out: “It is not our country...We do not have the opportunity to do as we planned.”

A large crowd of Burmese migrants, NGO workers and medical staff had gathered on the grounds of a legendary Mae Sot clinic and hospital run by Dr Cynthia Maung. The institution has long provided free treatment for the endless stream of the sick and wounded who arrive from Myanmar’s war-torn Karen state, just across the Moei river. But Miss Suu Kyi was pressured by nervous Thai officials to abandon her visit to Dr Maung’s hospital. They claim her programme had to be changed for reasons of security.

Over the past several decades Karen civilians have fled fierce fighting between the poorly-equipped rebel forces of the Karen National Union (KNU) and Myanmar’s national army. Altogether there are around 140,000 Myanmar refugees scattered across nine camps in Thailand.

Thailand’s defence minister, Sukumpol Suwanatat, is keen to send the refugees back home and close the camps. His rationale is that Myanmar is moving towards democracy. Khin Ohmar, a co-ordinator of Burma Partnership, an NGO, expressed a common fear among the community of exiles. “We fear that the Thai authorities will misuse Suu Kyi’s comments over the refugees’ situation, for the purpose of speeding up the repatriation of refugees.”

In her meetings with migrant workers and in her brief encounter with refugees, Miss Suu Kyi acknowledged their desire to return—and also their anxieties about going home too soon. She seems to be taking the measured position that the time is not ripe for their return and that it won’t be until two conditions are fulfilled: there should be both peace in Myanmar and the economic opportunity for them to earn a living.

Peace talks

In spite the efforts of Myanmar’s president, Thein Sein, to bring the KNU (and all ethnic armed groups) into peace talks and ceasefire agreements, so far there is no military agreement between the two sides. Fighting still rages farther north of Karen (or Kayin) state, in Kachin state. The KNU, for its part, welcomes the notion of peace talks with the government, but insists that it is not yet a safe time for refugees to return home.

The KNU and other ethnic parties were disappointed that conversations planned between Miss Suu Kyi and the leadership of the KNU and other ethnic groups were cancelled. Apparently the Thais scuttled them after receiving complaints from Myanmar’s government.

Thein Sein himself decided to skip the World Economic Forum in Bangkok. Had he gone ahead, as planned, he would have been upstaged by the rock-star reception given to Miss Suu Kyi, his most prominent political rival and, as it happens, a Nobel laureate. At first he postponed his official visit to Thailand, till June 5th and 6th, and then he cancelled it altogether. According one Bangkok newspaper, the Nation, Burmese diplomats had complained to Thailand’s foreign ministry about Miss Suu Kyi’s trip to meet with rebel groups at the frontier. Another report had it that Miss Suu Kyi’s meeting with Thailand’s deputy prime minister was especially annoying to officials in Myanmar. They discussed labour and refugee issues, which the two governments have failed to do for the past 40 years.

The government in Naypidaw knows there are hugely sensitive constitutional issues at stake. Many of the ethnic groups in Myanmar are demanding a federal solution along the lines of the Panglong agreement drafted by Suu Kyi’s father, General Aung San, in 1947. It is becoming clear that while the government is happy for Miss Suu Kyi to endorse its reform process, buttressing its legitimacy by serving as a partner, they do not want her to become in any way involved in a solution to the ethnic conflicts.

(Picture credit: AFP)