Burma’s military regime is giving its critics more ammunition, tightening its grip ahead of a general election this year by seeing to it that independent political parties are barred from chanting slogans, marching in rallies and displaying their party flags when they campaign.
Ahead of national elections for parliament – meant to set the foundation for a "discipline flourishing democracy" in the South-east Asian nation -- the country’s latest restrictions aim to stamp out the customary colour, animated campaigning and slogan cheering that is the standard feature of pre-poll politics in the more vibrant democracies in the region, such as Indonesia and the Philippines.
These limitations were spelled out in a late June directive issued by Burma’s powerful Election Commission (EC), whose rulings cannot be challenged in a court ahead of the poll. The election date itself has not been announced.
Published in the local media, ‘Directive 2/2010’ reveals the lengths to which the EC has gone to protect the authoritarian order in Burma, also called Myanmar.
Declared taboo during the campaign are any speeches and published material that "tarnish" the image of the military-run state, its over 400,000- strong armed forces and the junta-shaped 2008 Constitution. Candidates have been warned to avoid public utterances that undermine "security and community peace."
And even if the independent parties – only three of the registered 33 so far – yield to these shackles, they face even more challenges when they organise public meetings for candidates to address the estimated 27.2 million voters across the country.
The parties have to first seek approval from the EC and three different local authorities a week ahead of a planned meeting, specifying the building where it will be held.
In addition, their applications need to state how many people will attend each meeting and give a detailed biography and photograph of each speaker, as well as the exact time each speaker will begin and end speaking.
"This is blatant interference by the junta to try and control the outcome of this year’s election," said Zin Linn, spokesman for the National Coalition Government for the Union of Burma (NCGUB), the democratically elected government that won Burma’s last general election in 1990 but has since been forced into exile. "Some of these restrictions are more severe than those in the 1990 election."
That this election will be a "sham" is confirmed by the unlimited freedom enjoyed by the pro-junta Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), Zin Linn says. "It is allowed to break all the limits placed by the EC on political parties. The junta is also openly encouraging people to support the USDP," he told IPS.
The USDP, headed by the junta’s second-in-command, Prime Minister Thein Sein, is the political wing of the pro-regime Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA).
But the USDA, which at one time declared that it had 18 million members, does more than serve as the social and welfare arm of the regime. Its members have been used to harass those with the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party led by pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
The NLD, which won the 1990 elections with a thumping 82 percent of the 485 seats in parliament, was forced to dissolve as a party after it announced in March that it would boycott the poll given the junta’s restrictions around the conduct of this year’s poll.
The NLD’s high-risk political gamble was in solidarity for Suu Kyi, who has spent over 14 of the past 20 years under house arrest, and the country’s over 2,200 political prisoners.
The poll restrictions come at a time when Burma’s military rulers have a greater stranglehold on the country than they had in 1990. That poll was held two years after a student-led democracy uprising was brutally crushed. Thus, the intervening years saw the regime at the time -- in power since a 1962 coup – nurse uncertainty about its absolute hold over the country.
That political atmosphere enabled the 1990 poll to be held with "a bit more openness" than this year’s general election, says Aung Naing Oo, a Burmese political analyst living in exile in Thailand. "Political parties had 17 months to campaign and although there were restrictions, not all were properly enforced."
"There was lot of intimidation against the NLD but no rules against parties that are as restrictive as this year’s," he told IPS. "Election Day was very, very free and fair; vote counting was very transparent."
That same poll saw some 230 political parties apply to contest the election, but only 93 vied for seats in the legislature on voting day. And although the military warned that the number of people at campaign meetings in townships could not exceed 50, NLD’s meeting reportedly drew between 300 to 500 people at times.
This time around, the junta appears determined to avoid a repeat of seeing a pro-junta party trounced at the polls, an attitude that has alarmed rights groups.
"The laws have been drafted with broad language as to what would constitute illegal or not," said Benjamin Zawacki, Burma researcher for the London-based Amnesty International. "The powers vested in the EC gives them complete discretion and there is no appeal process."
"There are three freedoms utterly fundamental for an election – the human rights for freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association," he said in an interview. "We see these three freedoms clearly under attack this time." (END) By Marwaan Macan-Markar
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