Throughout Burma, preparations are quietly being made for the country's first elections in two decades. The last time Burmese citizens went to the polls, in May 1990, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won convincingly. The country's military rulers refused to allow the party to form the government. This time around, the generals are planning not to repeat their mistake, and so are tightly controlling all aspects of the polls in order to ensure they do not lose. One of the central tenets of this strategy appears to be deliberately keeping everyone in the dark.
Preparations for the elections, currently thought to be scheduled for mid-2010, are being undertaken even before new electoral laws have been made public, let alone promulgated. As such, until all new election-related legislation is made public, no one outside of the government actually knows how the polls will be conducted – and, more importantly, who will be competing. Officially, there are no political parties registered to put up candidates in the election, and this can only happen after the new regulations are passed and an election commission is established.
Until that point, little planning can be done by the public and civil society. "The regime, especially Senior General Than Shwe, is keeping everyone guessing," said Win Min, an independent Burmese academic based in Chiang Mai, in Thailand. "The electoral law is likely to be revealed only a few months before the election, so that the opposition is kept off guard and has little time to select candidates and register them, let alone plan a campaign." During the elections of 1990, electoral regulations were made public 20 months before the elections, which perhaps explains the junta's reticence this time around.
Twenty years on, Burma is a very different country than it was in 1990. Repression, harassment and economic decay have together left the Burmese citizenry bewildered and angry at the military, though whether this will translate into a strong anti-government vote at the polls remains an open question. Indeed, pro-democracy activists are currently split on whether they should even run in the elections. "Why should we contest these elections?" says a US-based Burmese activist, Aung Din. "The military will tightly control everything. How can there be free and fair elections when many of our leaders are in prison for political activities?"