The national elections planned for later this year are currently dominating everything else in Burma, despite the fact that there has been no official announcement about when the polls will actually take place. Nevertheless, all over Burma preparations are being made for the country's first elections in two decades, with the government administration having been put into suspended animation while ministers and civil servants in effect start political campaigning.
In the last elections, held in May 1990, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won convincingly. But Burma's military rulers did not allow them to form a civilian government. This time around, the generals are determined not to make the same mistake, and are tightly controlling everything to ensure they do not lose. Part of this strategy is clearly a 'no information' approach to the polls. "The electoral and political-party laws are now 60-70 percent complete," Foreign Minister Nyan Win told his Thai counterpart, Kasit Piromya, at a recent ASEAN meeting in Hanoi. "[It will] take another two or three months to make it 100 percent. So, I think the elections would be most probably in the second half [of the year]." This view is shared by analysts and diplomats in Beijing, Burma's closest ally, who believe that the polls will take place sometime after September.
Superstition seems to be having an impact on planning. According to senior military sources speaking to this writer late last year, the elections will take place on 10 October – the 10th of the 10th month of 2010 – and exactly 10 parties will be allowed to run. Many observers are now strongly tipping 10 October 10 as the date to watch, given the known fixation of the junta (including its chief, Gen Than Shwe) on numerology. In the past, the military made many key decisions on the basis of what astrologers had decreed as auspicious or significant dates, including the 1990 election date and the mass move to the new jungle capital of Naypyidaw. While it now seems almost certain to be held in either October or November – after the rainy season – the alleged obsession with the number 10 may actually be a hoax. However, it is known that the elections will be held on a Sunday, the Burmese rest day.
Meanwhile, until the election laws are made public, there is little that the potential political players can do but bide their time. Until then, no one knows how the election will be conducted, and more importantly who will be competing. Officially, after all, there are still no political parties registered to stand candidates in the election, and this can only happen after the relevant bylaws are passed and an electoral commission established. "The political parties and election laws will be unveiled at the last minute," Win Min, a Burmese academic based at Chiang Mai University in Thailand said recently. "They want to keep any potential opposition wrong-footed, and not allow them time to organise."