Free and Fair?

The legitimacy of the 2010 election rests on more than just the release of political prisoners and allowing the opposition to participate 

Burma’s ruling junta has recently been under pressure by a skeptical international community to verify its claims that it has put into place “free and fair” conditions for next year’s election.

The baseline indicators of a credible electoral process, observers say, are: the release of all political prisoners, including the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi; and allowing all stakeholders to participate in the election.   

Residents of Mandalay cast their votes in the constitutional referendum on May 10, 2008.

At the UN General Assembly in New York in September, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made clear to Burma’s Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein that the onus was on the Burmese government to create the necessary conditions for credible and inclusive elections and to initiate a dialogue with the opposition.

While the urgency of the country’s political reconciliation has long been a first priority, few Burma watchers have to date raised concerns on a number of critical issues related to the election process that can directly affect the environment of a free and fair election.

For example, in a meeting with Thailand’s Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on the sidelines of the Asean summit earlier this year, Thein Sein said that the regime will allow UN officials and developing countries to observe the general election.

But to ensure a free and fair election, the existence of independent foreign election monitors must be in place across the country at the outset of the election campaign period. 

Because the borderline between campaigning and manipulating is often murky in elections, and bearing in mind the natural partisanship, it is essential to introduce a checklist of criteria that are key to bringing about a free and fair election.

Election Management: The credibility of an election largely depends on the management of the electoral administrative mechanism, which must be independent and impartial.

Burma’s Election Commission (EC) was created on five levels in the 1990 election. Under the central election commission, there were 14 state and division commissions, 50 district commissions, 317 township commissions and 14,992 ward and village commissions. 

Although the EC was formed with nonpartisan retired government officials, the level of trust in the commission was very low at the time because the public believed it was influenced by the military regime and was neither independent nor impartial.

However, there was a free and fair outcome in the 1990 election, and it was recognized locally and internationally. There were three underlying reasons for this: the high level of public discontent with the military government; the ruling junta’s weak administrative control at the community level in the first two years following the coup d’état in 1988; and the relatively fair administration of ECs at the ward and village level—the EC usually comprising three respected persons from the community, plus one schoolteacher and one administrator from the regime.

However, the ruling junta is extremely unlikely to allow itself to suffer such a trouncing again (in 1990, Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won more than 80 percent of seats nationwide). It has hardened its attitude toward campaigning and voting as the 2008 constitutional referendum proved when the authorities scarcely hid efforts to manipulate, rig and bully their way to victory. 

Financing the Parties: Despite a fair outcome in the 1990 election, there were many situations that an independent observer would deem “unfair,” especially in terms of the political parties’ access to resources and the regime’s systematic nationwide intimidation and harassment during the campaign period and on the day of the election.

While the NLD faced a shortage of campaign funds, and its supporters were afraid to donate money to the party for fear of reprisals, the National Unity Party (NUP), a proxy of the former ruling socialist party, was able to bank on and utilize a vast amount of money and had access to vehicles and venues which were the property of the incumbent government.