Myanmar Junta Sets Election Date

BANGKOK — Myanmar will hold its first elections in two decades on Nov. 7, the ruling junta announced Friday, setting a date for a vote that has been denounced by opponents as a means of legitimizing military power within the format of civilian rule. The former main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, is boycotting the elections, saying the electoral rules are unfair and restrictive. Its leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate who has spent most of the past 20 years under house arrest, is legally barred from running in the election because she is under government detention. Chanel Sunglasses The party was officially disbanded in May because it refused to register for the campaign. It will be on the sidelines during the elections, and it remained unclear what role it might play in the future as a nonparty organization. The brief election announcement, carried on government radio and television stations in Myanmar, formerly Burma, said, “Multiparty general elections for the country’s Parliament will be held Sunday, Nov. 7.” It gave political parties until the end of this month to submit their candidate lists. The timing of the elections gives parties only a short time to recruit candidates and mount campaigns in what one Dior Sunglasses Burmese exile commentator, Win Tin, called “a calculated political ambush.” The United States and other Western nations have condemned the elections as undemocratic. After a two-day visit in early May, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt M. Campbell said he was “profoundly disappointed” by the preparations for the elections. “What we have seen to date leads us to believe that these elections will lack international legitimacy,” he said. Although the future Parliament ostensibly marks a shift to civilian government, it is heavily weighted toward the military, which has held power for the past half-century. One-quarter of the 440 seats will be reserved for active members of the military,Fendi Sunglasses which will allow them to control important ministries, including those responsible for justice, defense and internal affairs. Many other candidates are former military officers. In April, the prime minister and 22 other ministers retired from their military posts to run for office as civilians. In addition, a new Constitution creates a powerful National Defense and Security Council, controlled by the military commander in chief, that has the power to overrule the civilian government. Electoral rules also favor the junta, placing tight restrictions on campaigns and public statements that criticize the government. At least 40 parties have registered to run, including the Union Solidarity and Development Party, regarded as a Adidas Sunglasses vehicle for the junta’s candidates and believed to have received state money and special privileges. Although it is clear that the military will retain power, Myanmar will head into a new and untested phase after the elections. Some analysts see the possibility for positive, if incremental, changes. “There has rightly been much international criticism of the new Constitution and of the fact that the elections will not be inclusive,” the International Crisis Group, a conflict resolution organization, said in a report in May. “But the political and generational shift that the elections will bring about may nevertheless represent the best opportunity in Nike Sunglasses a generation to influence the future direction of the country.” The group’s Asia program director, Robert Templer, said the tightly controlled but possibly relatively fair vote “presents important challenges, as well as opportunities, to domestic stakeholders and to the international community.” The National League for Democracy, now dissolved, won the last election in 1990 by an overwhelming margin but was denied its seats by the military. The new elections are scheduled to take place shortly before Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s latest term of house arrest expires. The fact that her husband, who died in 1999, was a foreigner also prohibits her from running. Other prisoners,Cartier Sunglasses including an estimated 2,000 political prisoners, are also barred from taking part. A breakaway faction of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National Democratic Force, is taking part in the elections despite her objections. It has squabbled with some other members of the party. Most other parties represent ethnic minority groups with specific local agendas. But pro-democracy parties are facing the most difficulties. A prominent opposition candidate and former political prisoner, Phyo Min Thein, recently resigned as the leader of his Union Democratic Party because of what he called an “unfavorable pre-election environment.” LV Sunglasses “My resignation is proof to the international community that the forthcoming elections will not be free and fair,” he said in a statement. At the United Nations, the office of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement calling on the junta, known as the State Peace and Development Council, to “honor their publicly stated commitments to hold inclusive, free and fair elections.” The “essential steps” for a transition to democracy listed in the statement included the release of all remaining political prisoners “without delay” so they can participate in the elections. But Mr. Ban’s attempts to sway the military junta have had little result. When he visited Myanmar in July 2009, the Wholesale Nike Sunglassesmembers of the junta not only made no concessions on the elections, but also refused his request to visit Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi. Jordan 13 Jordan 14 Jordan 15 Jordan 16 Jordan 17