Burma's farcical referendum highlights junta's absurdity

Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun

May 05, 2008 - It is frequently a trait of generals and other very senior military officers that they have absolutely no sense of the ridiculous.

They can get involved in the most farcical activities without any realization that they are making themselves laughing-stocks.

Mind you, given some of the thoroughly unpleasant decisions military officers sometimes have to make, having no sense of the surreal may be a necessary survival mechanism.

Even so, it is hard not to laugh out loud at the insistence by the military regime running Burma that next Saturday's referendum on a new constitution for the southeast Asian nation is a firm step toward multi-party democracy.

Without a whiff of a sense of irony, the junta, headed by Senior Gen. Than Shwe, is so insistent that the new constitution is a good and democratic thing they have made it punishable by up to 10 years in prison for anyone to urge people to vote "no."

So the opposition National League for Democracy led by detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has had a hard time conveying its strong reservations about this proposed constitution -- which seems to achieve little except to ensure the military will continue to be the ultimate power and authority in Burma.

While opponents of the constitutional model have been silenced, senior figures in the junta and their thoroughly unpleasant grassroots political operatives have been using all forms of coercion -- from physical violence to threats to withdraw government services such as the water supply -- to impress on people the necessity of voting "yes."

Burmese voters may, of course, relish this opportunity to vote. They haven't been asked to do that since 1990, when 85 per cent of them plumped for Suu Kyi and the NLD.

The generals were appalled, annulled the election, kept Suu Kyi and hundreds of NLD leaders locked up, and slowly discussed how to avoid such a nasty thing happening again.

So it has taken 14 years to get to this point -- step five in the junta's seven-step road map to its version of democracy. And only the junta's hand-picked delegates, not Suu Kyi or the NLD, have been involved in evolving the constitutional proposals, a process which has primarily involved the delegates listening to speeches by army officers.

It does not look, however, that very many Burmese will get a chance to vote, however keen they may be to do so.

The generals say there are just over four million eligible voters, which seems extraordinarily low in a country with a population of over 42 million. Several outside observer organizations reckon there should be about 23 million eligible voters.

But as the whole process is a farce, it probably doesn't really matter.

The constitutional proposals are an adaption of those used by former president Suharto of Indonesia to control a thinly disguised military dictatorship for 32 years.

The junta's model for Burma begins by saying that the country's president must hail from the military, which gives a good indication of where this document is heading.

Then, a quarter of the parliamentary seats will be allocated to people nominated by the military.

The military will also fully control and appoint the ministers to several key ministries, including Defence and the Interior -- which is the department managing internal security.

To cap it off, the military reserves the right to oust any civilian administration it feels is putting national security in jeopardy.

This bizarre construction is meant, according to the junta, to provide a fine framework for multi-party elections in 2010.

The chances of that happening do not appear to be good. It is far more likely that what will emerge is, again, the highly directed form of democracy that functioned in Indonesia until Suharto was ousted by a popular uprising in 1998. There were a variety of political parties, but even those with designated "opposition" roles functioned as pantomime puppets manipulated from above by the military.

And Suu Kyi, who frightens the generals the way mice terrify elephants, will be allowed no role under the new dispensation.

The junta has already proclaimed that no one who is or has been married to a foreigner is eligible for public office. Suu Kyi was married to the British scholar of Tibet and Buddhism, Michael Aris, who died of cancer in 1999.

Sun International Affairs Columnist

To reach Jonathan Manthorpe, go to his blog at: www.vancouversun.com/blogs

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