Week 2: 2010 Election Watch (16-22 March)

By Altsean-Burma • March 24, 2010

Developments

The SPDC Election Commission issued the Political Parties Registration Bylaws. According to the Bylaws, political parties will have to pay 300,000 kyat (US$300) to register while each candidate will be charged 500,000 kyat (US$500). Each candidate will have a 10 million kyat (US$10,000) limit for campaign expenditures.
The SPDC Election Commission opened the registration period for political parties. Political parties that want to participate in the upcoming elections have to submit their registration to the Election Commission in Naypyidaw.
The anti-election campaign began. Leaflets condemning the SPDC polls and the 2008 constitution were distributed at road intersections and bus stops in some Rangoon townships.
The SPDC and its proxies continued their election campaign. USDA members solicited support in Karen State by providing loans to local communities. SPDC Deputy Minister for Home Affairs Brig Gen Phone Swe campaigned in Northern Arakan State to lure Muslim voters.
The SPDC Censorship Board continued to block private news outlets from publishing election opinions that did not conform to the regime’s views. However, journals close to SPDC Information Minister Brig Gen Kyaw San were allowed to publish content in favor of the election laws. A commentary published in state-run newspapers defended the SPDC election laws against criticism that they targeted Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

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Reactions

In a letter to UN Sec-Gen Ban Ki-moon, the All Burma Monks’ Alliance, the 88 Generation Students, and the All Burma Federation of Students Union said that the regime issued “a set of unfair and unjust electoral laws, which will beget undemocratic elections.”
The Karen National Union (KNU) said that the SPDC election laws were “totally undemocratic and unfair.” KNU General Secretary Zipporah Sein said the elections “will only compound the suffering of our ethnic people.”
Shan Nationalities League for Democracy spokesperson Sai Leik said his party could not accept the SPDC election laws as they were “one-sided and […] simply unjust and unfree.”
In a letter to UN Sec-Gen Ban Ki-moon the United Nationalities Alliance said that the SPDC election laws were based on the “unjust and legally unapproved 2008 constitution” and that the coming elections would not be free and fair.
Free Burma Coalition-Philippine spokesman Egoy Bans said that instead of employing an all-inclusive process, “the regime opted to bypass all norms of decency by creating an election law in a very secretive and exclusive manner.”

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This post is in: 2010 Elections