Sep 13th 2014
WHEN an election commission of questionable independence capriciously calls off elections, you would expect its democratic critics to be up in arms. On September 7th Myanmar’s Union Election Commission announced that it was cancelling 35 by-elections expected later this year. Thirty-five vacant seats make up quite a chunk of parliament, which has 440 seats in the lower house and 224 in the upper one. Yet the reaction was muted. Some opposition politicians—and even representatives of the government’s Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP)—voiced protests, yet their hearts seemed not to be in it. To a political class with so much on its plate, the issue of by-elections seemed a distraction they could do without.
This, in fact, was more or less the official reason given for the cancellation. The commission’s head pointed to the burdens on Myanmar of being this year’s chair of ASEAN, the ten-member Association of South-East Asian Nations. In November the country will host a summit of ASEAN members plus America, China, India, Russia and others. He also mentioned preparations for the general election expected late next year. The main opposition, the National League for Democracy (NLD), boycotted the previous poll in 2010, so this may be the first genuine electoral competition for national power after half a century of military rule.
It is only three years since Myanmar embarked on its experiment with democratic reform led by the president, Thein Sein, a former general. In the 12 months bookended by the East Asia Summit and the election, the country has a lot to get through: putting in place a process that might end more than six decades of warfare between the state and a plethora of ethnic insurgencies; agreeing on whether and how to change the constitution, which gives the army a veto on change and bars the country’s most popular politician, the NLD’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, from the presidency; deciding whether to switch from a first-past-the-post system to one of proportional representation; implementing the economic reforms the country needs if its poor majority are to feel that political change will actually make their lives better; and coping with a worrying rise in discrimination and violence directed at Muslims by the Buddhist majority.
Nobody thinks a national peace agreement can be reached in the next year. But those involved do feel the country is tantalisingly close to an historic first stage—converting a series of bilateral ceasefire agreements into a national one involving 16 armed groups. Some insurgent groups, such as the one fighting for the ethnic-Kachin minority, have yet to sign any ceasefire. The target date for a national one keeps slipping. In early August, Soe Thane, a minister in the president’s office, expected it to be signed in September. This month a colleague predicted November. A ceasefire would pave the way for a national political dialogue aimed at reaching a lasting peace settlement. The hope is that it could be sufficiently entrenched by late next year to survive the election.
That election may now have the effect of disappointing everyone. It seems most unlikely that the constitution will be changed before it. Imposed on the country in a rigged referendum in 2008, it is designed by the generals to be resilient. Besides barring from the highest office those, like Miss Suu Kyi, who are related to foreigners, it also guarantees the army 25% of parliamentary seats and makes constitutional change dependent on a parliamentary majority of, oddly enough, over 75%. A parliamentary committee has ruled against lifting the ban on Miss Suu Kyi. The president is in any case elected indirectly. The NLD would have to contest the parliamentary election without being able to promise that its icon would become the country’s leader.
Even lowering the “threshold” for constitutional change or reducing army clout now seems unlikely. Besides having to compete without its biggest attraction and counter the usual electoral tricks of incumbent governments, the NLD faces an arithmetical challenge: to win more than half the parliamentary seats, it will need more than two-thirds of those contested. Since, in some areas, regional and ethnic parties will do well, that will be tough. But the ethnic parties will be dissatisfied, too, as their lack of national appeal will give them little say in parliament. Some fear that the election may intensify ethnic conflict just when an end to it seemed in sight; and that populist campaign language may cause more trouble for Muslims, especially the 800,000 or so Rohingyas in the strife-scarred western state of Rakhine.
As for the USDP, it is likely to find, as it did in the by-elections in 2012 that swept the NLD and Miss Suu Kyi into parliament in a landslide, that it is still not very popular. This may explain its interest in proportional representation. Adopting a new voting system without a constitutional amendment would be a travesty. That does not rule it out. But it would almost certainly mean delaying the election as new boundaries are drawn.
Capacity constraints
Amid such political uncertainty, it is not surprising that the bonanza of foreign investment some hoped for when Myanmar, Asia’s last frontier, opened its doors has not really materialised. An even bigger problem, however, may be a lack of capacity in all branches of government. This is an administration that only last month discovered, thanks to the first census in over 30 years, that its country had 9m fewer people than the 60m it thought. Laws pile up in a parliament with little time to read them.
Against this backdrop, even some of those who campaigned hardest to end military dictatorship in Myanmar find themselves dreading an election that is supposed to mark the definitive step to a new pluralist era. Sharpening the irony, it is the former and serving generals who resist any tampering with the constitution who may have the biggest stake in the election. It may enable them to bolster their legitimacy—albeit marginally in such a flawed vote—without sacrificing their veto on democracy.
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