One-Horse Race to One-Party Rule?

bicameral parliament chart

The opposition parties and even the pro-regime National Union Party (NUP) face astounding defeats as the main junta-backed party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) won an overwhelming victory in Burma's elections on Sunday, paving the way for near absolute control of the future parliament, according to the latest unconfirmed poll results.


The first elections held in 20 years, they are also the first to be held for a multi-party parliament since 1962.

Led by top junta officials, the USDP contested all 1,157 seats in the bicameral and regional parliaments, reportedly winning 80 percent of the seats while the NUP, an offshoot of the former ruling party of the late dictator Ne Win, won only 54 of the 980 seats they contested (the exact number of NUP seats in the bicameral parliament remains unavailable).

The two Rangoon-based pro-democracy parties also suffered badly. The largest party, the National Democratic Force (NDF), won only 16 out of 161 seats it contested and the Democratic Party (Myanmar) won only three out of 48 contested.

At least six parties, including the NUP, have lodged complaints with the Union Election Commission (EC) for “dishonest advance ballots forcibly extorted from voters combined with a motley array of vote rigging methods in the voting process,” claiming the irregularities had given the USDP an unreasonably majority of votes.

NDF chairman Dr.Than Nyein said he has urged all candidates in his party not to sign EC declarations recognizing the results.

If all the major anti-government parties refuse to accept the results, the legitimacy of the election, which is already seen as fragile, will be further weakened. The controversial election is supposed to provide the legal basis on which the military plans to continue to rule in civilain disguise.

A saving grace for the regime, therefore, may come from the results for the ethnic parties, which did relatively well in comparison to the Rangoon-based anti-government parties despite the fact that the ethnic parties faced similar suspicious large-scale advance ballots that were reportedly extorted from voters, mainly civil servants, prior to the elections.

“I am quite pleased with the results in Arakan State,” said Dr. Aye Maung, the chairman of Rakhine [Arakan] Nationalities for Development Party (RNDP). “But I will still lodge complaints with the election commission about dishonest advanced ballots for the USDP and irregularities in vote counting.”

The largest ethnic party, the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party (SNDP), won 22 seats in the bicameral parliament and 36 seats in the regional parliaments in its quest for 156 seats in total. The RNDP, which ran for 44 seats, won 16 in the bicameral parliament and 19 in the regional parliaments.

Other ethnic parties including the Chin Progressive Party and the All Mon Regions Democracy Party won 39 seats out of 63 contested.

However, since these ethnic parties mostly contested for regional parliamentary seats, in addition to the NDF's 12 seats, they would altogether get only 69 of the 498 elected seats in the 664-seat bicameral parliament, which embodies the legislative powers.

Despite popular opposition, the USDP party reportedly won more than 81 percent of parliamentary seats in the Rangoon constituencies—99 percent in Mandalay, 93 percent in Irrawaddy and 97 percent in the Tenasserim Regions, according to the latest unofficial results. More USDP victories are predicted as vote-counting is not yet complete.

Pro-democracy candidates currently in the lead during unconfirmed vote counting may yet be in for more suprises as they are declared losers if bags of mysterious advance “joker ballots,” as the public has dubbed them, suddenly come to the rescue of USDP candidates.

Asked if the USDP could ultimately win more than 95 percent of parliamentary seats with results yet to be confirmed by the EC, NDF leader Khin Maung Swe said, “This is quite possible because vote-counting and vote-rigging are still going on.”

There is little likelihood that the junta-appointed EC will bother to respond to the spate of complaints of vote fraud let alone resolve them despite threats by opposition parties to boycott the poll results if the EC fails to take action.

With a quarter of the parliamentary seats guaranteed to the military under the junta-drafted 2008 Constitution and the USDP assured of parliamentary domination, hopes for the opposition parties gaining a significant say in the new parliament are waning, weakening their stated justification—to work towards democratic values and amendments of the Constitution from within the parliament—for contesting the polls from the outset.

Source:http://irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20034&page=1