Hope still alive for Myanmar

Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Fri, 11/19/2010 9:46 AM |

Myanmar may still become a democracy although its Nov. 7 elections have been slammed as a sham by many countries, experts agreed on Thursday.

The elections, which have given the majority of parliament seats to the military junta’s proxies, was criticized as only providing justification for the military to be in power.

“It is better to have an election than nothing at all, although there were many flaws in the election process,” chairwoman of the Institute for Democracy and Human Rights at the Habibie Center, Dewi Fortuna Anwar, told The Jakarta Post.

She said having Myanmar undertake an election was positive in that it indicated there was still hope in more pluralistic politics in Myanmar for the future. “At least there are other parties besides the junta in the parliament now, although those parties are controlled by the military,” she said.

The world community — excluding ASEAN members and China, Myanmar’s closest ally — has condemned the Myanmar elections, calling them neither free nor fair.

The Myanmar government’s regulations made it impossible for democracy icon and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and opposition parties to take part, as well as for foreign journalists and observers to enter the restive country.

Myanmar’s state radio announced partial results last week for 147 constituencies in the Lower House, with the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) winning 133. The USDP won 81 of 86 races newly announced for the Upper House, the Associated Press reported last Friday.

Top members of the ruling junta were among those who won seats. They include Prime Minister Thein Sein who also heads the USDP, a proxy for the junta. Dewi said the Indonesian government needed to push Myanmar to keep moving toward democracy, which “takes time”.

“Elections are not the end of concerted efforts to push for the development of democracy in Myanmar,” she said.

“What we expect to observe now is how the Myanmar government reconciles with opposition parties and involves Aung San Suu Kyi in their development plans.”

University of Indonesia international relations scholar Hariyadi Wirawan said the Myanmar elections gave the right momentum for ASEAN to push that country toward reconciliation. “No matter how much the elections lacked democratic procedures, they were still a step toward reconciliation,” he said.

An international relations expert with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Evan Laksmana, said it was too soon to say if Myanmar would now be democratic after the elections as the elections themselves did not involve opposition parties.

“The problem is not whether Myanmar would have a legitimate government or not, but what steps the new government will take in regard to opposition parties or political prisoners,” he said. “We still do not know regarding this department. It’s still hard to measure within this context whether Myanmar will have a genuine democracy.”

Foreign Ministry director general for ASEAN cooperation Djauhari Oratmangun said earlier that while Indonesia welcomed the results of the Myanmar elections, it was “urging reconciliation”. He also said ASEAN was making a reconciliation blueprint, which would be announced to the public “in time”.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/11/19/hope-still-alive-myanmar.html