| Washington Post | - |
RANGOON,
Burma - Millions of residents voted Sunday in Burma's first democratic
election in years, a historic event that could mark a new era for the
country and pave the way to power for the longtime opposition leader,
Aung San Suu Kyi.
Journey towards democracy: Myanmar holds first free election in 25 years
Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrives at a polling station to cast her vote during Burma’s election. (Lam Yik Fei/Getty Images)
RANGOON, Burma — Millions
of residents voted Sunday in Burma’s first democratic election in
years, a historic event that could mark a new era for the country and
pave the way to power for the longtime opposition leader, Aung San Suu
Kyi.
Around the country, voters lined up before the polls opened at 6 a.m. and waited in the hot sun for hours to cast their ballots. Some polls were open after the 4 p.m. closing time because of demand. Afterward, many voters went on Facebook and posted photos of their ink-stained pinky fingers.
Suu Kyi, 70, was swarmed by international reporters Sunday when she voted in her home constituency of Bahan as the current president, Thein Sein — the former general who heads the country’s ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party — cast his vote in the country’s capital of Naypyidaw.
Suu Kyi had said earlier in the week that if her party wins the majority of seats in parliament, she will govern the country despite the constitutional barrier.
“I’m going to be above the president,” she said. When asked how, she responded, “Oh, I have already made plans.”
Sein said Friday that the government would respect the outcome of the election, and many voters seemed eager to take him at his word. In Burma’s last democratic election in 1990, Suu Kyi and the NLD won an overwhelming majority, but the country’s military dictators ignored the results. They had in 1989 placed her under house arrest, where she remained off and on for the better part of two decades.
“I think it will be free and fair overall,” said one of Sein’s supporters, Aye Aye Mu, 28, a mother of two who comes from a military family.
Critics
have said that these elections cannot be considered truly free because
voting was not held in some areas of the country still fraught with
ethnic violence. And about 1 million Rohingya Muslims, who are stateless
and considered by the government to be illegal immigrants from
neighboring Bangladesh, have been stripped of their right to vote.
More than 100,000 Rohingya still reside in displacement camps after Muslim and Buddhist violence in 2012.
“We’ve said it is difficult to see how this can be a truly free and fair election given the disenfranchisement of the Rohingya population, the 25 percent of parliament guaranteed to the military and other structural problems,” said Tom Malinowski, assistant U.S. secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. “But there can still be a result that credibly reflects the overall desires of a majority of the Burmese people.”
The election is being closely watched by Burma’s supporters in the West, particularly in the Obama administration, which encouraged the regime’s shift toward democracy by easing sanctions and sending nearly $500 million in aid.
In a statement, Secretary of State John F. Kerry commended the nation on a “peaceful and historic poll” in which millions voted for the first time.
“While these elections were an important step forward,” he said, “we recognize that they were far from perfect. There remain important structural and systemic impediments to the realization of full democratic and civilian government, including the reservation of a large number of unelected seats for the military; the disfranchisement of groups of people who voted in previous elections, including the Rohingya; and the disqualification of candidates based on arbitrary application of citizenship and residency requirements.”
Officials have expressed concern that Burma’s reforms could be stalling, and dismay over a series of tough new laws governing family size, religious conversion and interfaith marriage, seen as targeting the country’s Muslim minority.
More than 11,000 election monitors from the Carter Center, the European Union and other outside organizations were in place at polling stations to ensure that the voting goes well. Early Monday, observer groups were investigating claims of late-arriving votes for the military-backed USDP that tipped seats in some farther-flung regions, according to Human Rights Watch.
More than 30 million voters were eligible to cast ballots for the upper and lower houses of parliament, as well as state and regional assemblies.
The country’s new computerized voter-registration rolls have been widely criticized for repeating and skipping names, but the Carter Center said in a report Oct. 27 that many specific claims of errors appeared to be “unsubstantiated.”
Outside Rangoon, the busy streets give way to flat farmland, dotted with simple huts with woven bamboo walls, mango groves and palm trees. Residents there — among the 70 percent of the population who still eke out a living in agriculture — said they were more concerned about their livelihoods of river fishing and farming than politics, and that their local candidates had never come to see them. One village received electricity only four months ago.
Nevertheless, on Sunday there were lines to get into the polling station in a school compound — men in one building, women in the other. Banners on the wall demonstrated voting procedures in graphics for those who had never voted before. A poll worker told the women that if they needed to go home to cook for their families, they could come back later before polls closed at 4 p.m.
Latt Latt Win, 34, clutched her 1-year-old daughter and said she had risen at 6 a.m. at her bean farm and traveled by boat, then precarious motorbike, to reach her polling place. She had been spurred to make the two-hour journey by all the media coverage, she said, and she thought it was her responsibility.
“I wanted to vote,” she said. “I got up, said my morning prayer and came here.” But she had still not made up her mind about her vote.
Sein Kyaw Thee, 45, who makes about $15 a day as a fisherman, said he voted for Suu Kyi’s party because he hoped it would bring prosperity to Burma and because he reveres her.
“The party is like the parents of the public,” he said. “But it’s not because of the party, it’s because of Mother Suu.”
Read more:
Burma, once a pariah state, gets its first real taste of KFC
Burma’s half-hearted commitment to democracy
Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Burma votes in first democratic election in years
Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrives at a polling station to cast her vote during Burma’s election. (Lam Yik Fei/Getty Images)
Around the country, voters lined up before the polls opened at 6 a.m. and waited in the hot sun for hours to cast their ballots. Some polls were open after the 4 p.m. closing time because of demand. Afterward, many voters went on Facebook and posted photos of their ink-stained pinky fingers.
By
nightfall, hundreds of supporters of Suu Kyi’s National League for
Democracy party had gathered on the street in front of the party
headquarters, waving red balloons, dancing, chanting and watching local
election results on big-screen TVs. They cheered every time a yellow
ballot was unfurled with a stamp next to a golden peacock, the symbol
for the NLD. Some preliminary results might be known Monday, but the
final official results could take days.
“We have been suffering
for 25 years. Today, we change the old system and bring in a new one,”
Theingi, a homemaker and mother of two, said at the rally. She uses only
one name.
Suu Kyi’s party was poised to make a strong showing in
the Southeast Asian nation of 51 million, which was isolated from the
world for more than half a century under a military dictatorship.
But
the path to victory is hardly clear. Party members appear to be
confident they will get the majority needed to govern. But the military
will still control 25 percent of the seats in parliament and key
ministries. A constitutional provision bars Suu Kyi, called “Mother
Suu,” from becoming president. And Burma, also known as Myanmar, has
more than 90 parties — smaller groups that support Burma’s ethnic
minorities — that will also play a factor in forming a new government.Suu Kyi, 70, was swarmed by international reporters Sunday when she voted in her home constituency of Bahan as the current president, Thein Sein — the former general who heads the country’s ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party — cast his vote in the country’s capital of Naypyidaw.
Suu Kyi had said earlier in the week that if her party wins the majority of seats in parliament, she will govern the country despite the constitutional barrier.
“I’m going to be above the president,” she said. When asked how, she responded, “Oh, I have already made plans.”
Sein said Friday that the government would respect the outcome of the election, and many voters seemed eager to take him at his word. In Burma’s last democratic election in 1990, Suu Kyi and the NLD won an overwhelming majority, but the country’s military dictators ignored the results. They had in 1989 placed her under house arrest, where she remained off and on for the better part of two decades.
“I think it will be free and fair overall,” said one of Sein’s supporters, Aye Aye Mu, 28, a mother of two who comes from a military family.
More than 100,000 Rohingya still reside in displacement camps after Muslim and Buddhist violence in 2012.
“We’ve said it is difficult to see how this can be a truly free and fair election given the disenfranchisement of the Rohingya population, the 25 percent of parliament guaranteed to the military and other structural problems,” said Tom Malinowski, assistant U.S. secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. “But there can still be a result that credibly reflects the overall desires of a majority of the Burmese people.”
The election is being closely watched by Burma’s supporters in the West, particularly in the Obama administration, which encouraged the regime’s shift toward democracy by easing sanctions and sending nearly $500 million in aid.
In a statement, Secretary of State John F. Kerry commended the nation on a “peaceful and historic poll” in which millions voted for the first time.
“While these elections were an important step forward,” he said, “we recognize that they were far from perfect. There remain important structural and systemic impediments to the realization of full democratic and civilian government, including the reservation of a large number of unelected seats for the military; the disfranchisement of groups of people who voted in previous elections, including the Rohingya; and the disqualification of candidates based on arbitrary application of citizenship and residency requirements.”
Officials have expressed concern that Burma’s reforms could be stalling, and dismay over a series of tough new laws governing family size, religious conversion and interfaith marriage, seen as targeting the country’s Muslim minority.
More than 11,000 election monitors from the Carter Center, the European Union and other outside organizations were in place at polling stations to ensure that the voting goes well. Early Monday, observer groups were investigating claims of late-arriving votes for the military-backed USDP that tipped seats in some farther-flung regions, according to Human Rights Watch.
More than 30 million voters were eligible to cast ballots for the upper and lower houses of parliament, as well as state and regional assemblies.
The country’s new computerized voter-registration rolls have been widely criticized for repeating and skipping names, but the Carter Center said in a report Oct. 27 that many specific claims of errors appeared to be “unsubstantiated.”
Outside Rangoon, the busy streets give way to flat farmland, dotted with simple huts with woven bamboo walls, mango groves and palm trees. Residents there — among the 70 percent of the population who still eke out a living in agriculture — said they were more concerned about their livelihoods of river fishing and farming than politics, and that their local candidates had never come to see them. One village received electricity only four months ago.
Nevertheless, on Sunday there were lines to get into the polling station in a school compound — men in one building, women in the other. Banners on the wall demonstrated voting procedures in graphics for those who had never voted before. A poll worker told the women that if they needed to go home to cook for their families, they could come back later before polls closed at 4 p.m.
Latt Latt Win, 34, clutched her 1-year-old daughter and said she had risen at 6 a.m. at her bean farm and traveled by boat, then precarious motorbike, to reach her polling place. She had been spurred to make the two-hour journey by all the media coverage, she said, and she thought it was her responsibility.
“I wanted to vote,” she said. “I got up, said my morning prayer and came here.” But she had still not made up her mind about her vote.
Sein Kyaw Thee, 45, who makes about $15 a day as a fisherman, said he voted for Suu Kyi’s party because he hoped it would bring prosperity to Burma and because he reveres her.
“The party is like the parents of the public,” he said. “But it’s not because of the party, it’s because of Mother Suu.”
Read more:
Burma, once a pariah state, gets its first real taste of KFC
Burma’s half-hearted commitment to democracy
Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Annie Gowen is The Post’s India bureau chief and has reported for the Post throughout South Asia and the Middle East.
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