Farce of the Burma vote
There can be no more cynical regime in Southeast Asia than that of Burma's military junta. The generals and colonels who have controlled that poor country since 1962 have looted the economy, mistreated citizens and made Burma a worldwide synonym for tyranny.
It is going to be difficult to top their current cynical move. The generals are about to bring to fruition a manipulated election that will endorse a rigged constitution to give the military control of the country forever. And all this is being passed off as an exercise in democracy.
The breathtaking military "reshuffle" last week is a case in point. No one is sure of the details because the junta has never felt the need to announce its important moves, let alone explain or justify them. But it appears that around six dozen senior officers were moved.
To call this a reshuffle is to demean the word. Thailand has reshuffles, where officers retire and move within the very public, designated chain of command. Burma's military movements had quite a different cast - and sinister at that.
The November elections are pre-arranged to be neither fair nor free. For starters, the military is guaranteed 25% of the 498 seats in the legislature.
The opaque musical chairs orchestrated by the ruling generals last week put certain officers in military positions to claim those 125 seats. Others were released from active service to run for many of the other seats supposedly meant for non-military civilians.
Ironically, the Burmese junta actually ran a free election. Back in 1990, a fair vote was held countrywide wherein the people rejected the military and its puppet political parties, and overwhelmingly elected pro-democracy civilians, the majority of whom were loyal to the banned leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
But because they got a result they did not want, the ruling generals simply ignored the election outcome and spent the next 20 years in a campaign of arrests, intimidation, imprisonment and torture of democratic Burmese.
This time, the election will reflect the wishes of the military dictatorship. The junta is openly backing several political parties, including with monetary funding. Voters from Rangoon to the smallest village have been instructed on what is expected of them on election day.
The largest group of democrats is the National Democratic Force. Some 200 candidates have raised the fees required to run for about 1,200 national and regional seats.
Ms Suu Kyi is the only Burmese with credentials as a national political leader. She has been banned, again, from the entire election process. In the first place, she is under house arrest on various trumped-up charges that would be laughed out of any court except the ones controlled by the Burmese military. She also is the widow of a foreigner, an offence so serious to the junta that it also disqualifies her from any political participation in her country.
The result of this political tragedy is a foregone conclusion. The military-written constitution will govern a military-run election where almost all candidates have been officially and ostentatiously military-approved. Mrs Suu Kyi has rightly called for a boycott. There is no reward for voting in a pre-determined election.
Outsiders may be helpless to alter the course of this shameless power grab by the junta, but they can expose it. It is most important that the Thai government and all other governments in the region refrain from endorsing this political charade.
Um comentário:
Caro Cambeta,
Enquanto a ASEAN permanecer um feira de vaidades, o exemplo mais caricato de soft power, a pedra no sapato que é o regime ditatorial na Birmânia vai continuar a causa muitas feridas.
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