Will there be Democracy in Burma

Burma has again figured in the ASEAN summit in Vietnam chiefly because it is holding elections on Nov. 7, the first in 20 years, which many expect would be a sham and merely an exercise to sugarcoat the military junta’s repressive rule and to provide a legal fig leaf to the dictatorship. The fears have validity inasmuch as the last time the junta held a national , it refused to recognize its results and instead jailed Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi who clearly won the ballot. She has since been kept under house arrest and the junta has refused to release her. Her party is boycotting the election, dealing a severe blow to the credibility of the exercise.

Ironically, the election is intended by the junta to be the answer to criticisms of its anti-democratic character. The criticisms came to a head in 2007 when Burma was forced to forfeit  its turn on the ASEAN rotating presidency because of its poor human rights record, and the Philippines was compelled to take over and hold the summit in Cebu. Manila has historically been particularly trenchant in its criticism of the human rights record of Burma, and it joined with Singapore later that year in scheduling a briefing by the United Nations
special representative to Burma, only to be overruled by the majority of the ASEAN leaders who sided with Burma, worried that the briefing would violate the ASEAN policy on non-interference of each other’s internal affairs.

Short URL: http://theasiantimes.com/?p=325

Posted by admin on Nov 8 2010. Filed under Asia, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry