Myanmar’s military junta will pick all members of the country’s new election commission, state media said yesterday as the regime revealed the first details of long-awaited laws for polls this year.
The government enacted five new laws on Monday ahead of elections promised by the junta later this year, which are expected in October or November although there is still no firm date.
The move adds to international concerns about the fairness of the elections — Myanmar’s first for 20 years — which critics say are a sham designed to legitimize the junta’s grip on power.
State-run newspapers yesterday published the full two-page text of the first of the laws, the “Union Election Commission Law,” signed by the junta chief, Senior General Than Shwe.
The law will “form a union election commission to supervise the practicing of the Union of Myanmar people’s rights to elect or stand for election as well as the political parties,” the text said.
However, it said the junta, officially known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), would itself appoint the commission, which will have at least five members.
All members must be more than 50 years old and “shall be deemed by the SPDC to be an eminent person, to have integrity and experience, to be loyal to the state and its citizens and shall not be a member of a political party.”
The commission would be responsible for designating constituencies, compiling voter lists and “supervising political parties to perform in accordance with the law.”
The body also has the power for “postponing and abolishing elections of the constituencies where free and fair elections cannot be held due to natural disaster or due to the local security situation,” the law said.
“It obviously does not bode well for the credibility of the elections,” activist Debbie Stothard, a Bangkok-based activist and coordinator of the ALTSEAN-Burma network, said of the electoral commission laws.
“It’s not a surprise — many people expect these elections to be stage-managed by the military regime. It’s an election run by the regime for the regime,” she said.
The last elections in 1990 were won by the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party of Aung San Suu Kyi, but the junta annulled the results and has kept Suu Kyi under house arrest for 14 of the past 20 years.
A Myanmar official said the date for this year’s polls was expected to be set by the election commission.
“I think that the election commission will have to announce the election date as it is their duty to hold elections. We cannot say anything right now except to wait for the election commission,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
Another official said that political parties “will get about six months to lobby for elections after election laws come out.”
The NLD has not said whether it will participate in this year’s promised elections, saying it will wait until it sees the full details of all the election laws.
Details of the law for the registration of political parties were expected to be released today.
The Constitution agreed upon in a May 2008 referendum effectively bans Suu Kyi from standing in the polls. It also reserves a quarter of all parliamentary seats for members of the military.
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