Doomed Before Election Day?

Earlier this month, Myanmar’s Union Election Commission announced that the country’s historic general elections will take place on November 8. The announcement sets the stage for polls following the country’s landmark opening in 2011 after half a century of military rule.

Yet with the election now only a few months away, it is still unclear whether Myanmar will be able to get past a string of formidable challenges that threaten a free and fair outcome. Indeed, some in the international community have already given up on striving for a “free and fair” election, preferring a lower, more realistic standard of “inclusive, transparent and credible.” But given the myriad problems that affect who can run, who can vote, and whose vote will count, it is difficult to see how it will pass even this test.

There is certainly no lack of reason to worry. In terms of who can run, the most obvious problem is that the country’s democratic icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who heads the National League for Democracy (NLD) opposition party, is still barred from running following the failure of constitutional reform last month. Myanmar’s constitution bans those with either a foreign spouse or children from the presidency – Suu Kyi’s late husband, who died in 1999, was British and her two sons were both born in London. Beyond Suu Kyi herself, individuals who have either been blacklisted for previous opposition to the state – including former political prisoners – or those who have recently returned to the country from exile overseas may have problems meeting the criteria for candidacy to contest parliamentary seats.

Current detainees, of course, will not be able to run in the elections. That is not an insignificant detail, especially given the growing crackdown in the country over the past year. As of the end of June, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Myanmar, 169 political prisoners are incarcerated and 446 activists are currently awaiting trial, including students and activists from fierce protests against the National Education Law which rocked the country earlier this year. That means that some of the figures most passionate about, and active in, Myanmar’s politics will not even be able to contest the elections.

The issue of who can vote is equally problematic. Christina Fink, a cultural anthropologist at George Washington University who studies Myanmar, told a panel at the Carnegie Endowment, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, on July 22 that in some cases citizens have had to pay large bribes just to acquire the citizenship cards required for them to vote – a rather big financial barrier to overcome. Some individuals have also had their citizenship unilaterally revoked by the government for various reasons, including suspected involvement in resistance to the state. The voting issue also bleeds into the statelessness of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and their citizenship question. 

With respect to how the votes will be counted, concerns have been mounting here as well. Most of the attention has been devoted to the error-riddled voter lists. In a June interview with The Washington Post, Suu Kyi said that the error rate on preliminary lists is between 30 and 80 percent in certain areas of Yangon – the country’s largest and most advanced city. With such dismal figures for the country’s former capital, many fear that it could be much worse in the border areas. In addition, some have reported that the error rate has tended to be higher in places where the NLD enjoys greater support relative to the ruling Union Solidarity Development Party (USDP).

Other challenges could further complicate matters. Fink said the government may attempt to manipulate polls by canceling or postponing elections in certain parts of the country where the USDP has not been able to campaign. This, combined with the other benefits of incumbency – including the ability to effectively “campaign” well before the 60-day period prior to polls – would amount to an even bigger advantage for the ruling party over the NLD and other competitors. And while Myanmar’s military chief has said that the armed forces will respect the outcome of the elections, all bets are off if violence occurs during the election. “The organization that has the most potential to ruin the outcome is the military,” Priscilla Clapp, formerly Washington’s top diplomat in Myanmar, warned at the Brookings Institution in July.

Despite these issues, many expect the NLD to win a comfortable majority of seats against the USDP. How comfortable, though, is still unclear, since the dizzying array of ethnic parties could also pick up more seats than expected. And even if the NLD does secure a clear victory in the elections, it does not automatically win the presidency under current rules. Instead, the upper house, lower house, and the military will each select one candidate, and the parliament as a whole will then vote on which of the three candidates selected will become president, with the two runner-ups becoming vice-presidents. That makes the outcome of Myanmar’s election all the more uncertain even if the country manages to get past its procedural challenges.

Once the outcome is finalized, the next president will face another daunting set of challenges, possibly under circumstances even more unfavorable than the ruling USDP is experiencing now. If there is a more fractured parliament, that will make progress on familiar problems like economic reform even harder to achieve. Formidable outstanding challenges like making peace with various ethnic groups will also not get any easier. Meanwhile, the military does not appear to be keen on relinquishing its effective parliamentary veto anytime soon, which may hamper movement on key constitutional reforms. For all the progress that Myanmar has made since its opening and slow transition to democracy, its generals look likely to maintain an iron grip on the country for some time to come, regardless of what happens at the ballot box.