Myanmar’s turbulent election
YANGON, Myanmar — The last time Myanmar held elections in 2015, an unbridled optimism rose from decades of isolation and military rule to deliver a landslide victory to a civilian party led by human rights icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
But as people prepare to go to the polls on Nov. 8 for only the second time since a military junta relinquished its monopoly on power, elation has ebbed to disappointment and uncertainty amid a growing coronavirus outbreak that’s exposed the slow rate of progress in the still developing nation.
Restrictions on campaigning, media coverage and election observing in the name of safety have raised doubts about a fair election. For many, the early promise of Suu Kyi’s political ascent has been betrayed by a government that has failed to bring prosperity and often overlooks minorities.
The country’s election commission, criticized for a lack of independence, announced last week it would cancel voting in parts of the country where ethnic minority populations have shunned Suu Kyi’s ruling National League for Democracy party, or NLD — disenfranchising 1.6 million people and inf laming tensions in places long marred by violence.
“It is not going to be free and fair,” Wahkushee Tenner, an ethnic Karen activist, said of the election. “This country’s constitution is against peace- building and democracy, and anything going through it won’t make any big difference for our ethnic people.”
A souring economy, battered by the effects of the pandemic and years of uneven development, has pushed millions to the brink of poverty and hunger. Foreign investment has stagnated as the country’s international reputation has been badly tarnished by the violent repression of the Rohingya Muslim minority at the hands of the military and police.
Suu Kyi’s complicity in the violence against the Rohingya — hundreds of thousands who are refugees in Bangladesh — and her fall from grace as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate epitomizes the way outside observers and Western governments misunderstood the nation’s ethnic and religious animosities and how Myanmar would change with free elections.
“2015 was a time of irrational optimism,” said historian Thant Myint- U, author of “The Hidden History of Burma.” “Not only had the country been racked by seven decades of internal armed conf licts, but several new and very well- armed insurgencies had appeared. ... It was a country that had been isolated since the 1960s and then had come under crushing Western sanctions, a country whose education system had been decimated and ethno- nationalism had replaced the progressive agendas of the past. There was never going to be a fairy tale ending anytime soon.”
The coronavirus has further complicated the nation’s turbulent path toward democracy.
Over the summer, Myanmar looked to be as fortunate as other developing countries, including Cambodia and Vietnam, in containing the virus.
But in the third week of August, the first local transmission in months was reported in the war- torn western state of Rakhine, leading to an explosion of cases that quickly spread to Yangon, the former capital and Myanmar’s largest city, also known as Rangoon.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, has now recorded more than 41,000 cases and 1,000 deaths, the third- most fatalities in Southeast Asia. While minuscule compared to countries such as the United States, the numbers were enough to strain Myanmar’s healthcare system, which was woefully unprepared after years of neglect.
Health authorities scrambled to convert sports facilities, monasteries, schools and other public buildings into hospitals as a surge in new cases threatened to exceed Yangon’s capacity for patients.
There have been reports of quarantined patients subjected to substandard conditions without access to bathrooms, running water or sanitary pads. Some have also complained about being forced to share a room with COVID- 19 patients while awaiting test results.
Months of limited testing capacity make it difficult to gauge the true severity of the outbreak.
In August, the country was only processing around 2,000 samples per day, which increased to roughly 5,000 per day in September. Testing only started regularly surpassing 10,000 per day in October after Myanmar acquired some 200,000 test kits from South Korea. At one point, a staggering 15% to 20% of coronavirus tests were coming back positive — one of the highest rates in the world.
Suu Kyi rebuffed calls from opposition parties to postpone the election because of the outbreak.
“I want our citizens to understand that voting in the general elections is their duty; in the same way, abiding by the health rules and regulations to protect themselves [ from] COVID- 19 is also their duty as citizens,” she said in a national address this month.
The NLD is expected to win another landslide with the backing of the country’s majority Buddhist Bamar, who make up more than two- thirds of Myanmar’s 54 million people and dominate the ranks of the nation’s powerful armed forces, the Tatmadaw.
Myanmar’s military is guaranteed a quarter of parliamentary seats under the country’s constitution, one of the greatest impediments to reform and genuine civilian leadership.
The arrangement makes it impossible for the opposition to win the required support of three- quarters of parliament to change the country’s charter.