Election in 18 Months: USDA Source

By WAI MOE

Burma’s first election in nearly two decades will be held 18 months from now, according to a source in the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), a mass organization formed by the country’s ruling junta.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source said that senior officials of the USDA told its members that the organization has only eighteen months from now to prepare to win the election.

“The USDA may have two parties in the election—the National Prosperity Party and the National Security and Development Party,” the source said. “But nobody, except top members of the USDA, will know exactly until the regime introduces a law on political party registration for the election.”

The law is expected to be announced by the end of this year, he added.
Htay Aung, a Burmese researcher with the Network for Democracy and Development, based in Thailand, also said that he had heard Burma’s military rulers were planning to promulgate the election law for the 2010 election by end of this year or early next year.

“But the junta won’t allow hundreds of parties to register, as they did in 1990. They will copy China, which has eight political parties,” he said.

He added that he didn’t think the whole USDA would be transformed to political parties for the election, but said he believed the USDA would form at least two proxy parties. “The USDA will still be a national organization after the election,” he said.

During his latest visit to Burma from August 18 to 23, the United Nations Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari met with members of other pro-junta political groups that are also likely to participate in the 2010 election.

These include the 88 Generation Students Youths (Union of Myanmar), a splinter group of the democratic opposition led by former student activist Aye Lwin, and the Wun Tha Nu (Patriotic) National League for Democracy, also sponsored by the Burmese junta.

“We can expect to see people like Ko Aye Lwin in the election,” said Htay Aung. “But I think the junta will only allow them to join the election under a pro-junta party banner, not as in freely formed political parties.”

Htay Aung pointed to the fact that the junta stopped Aye Lwin’s group from putting up a signboard in Mandalay as evidence that it wasn’t prepared to allow independent political activity.

Brig-Gen Kyaw Hsan, the information minister, said at a press conference on September 8 that arrangements were being made for the multiparty general election in 2010.

“Every political party which is in conformity with the prescriptions of the already approved constitution and rules and laws on political parties to be prescribed in the future will have rights to stand for the 2010 election,” the information minister was quoted as saying in the state-run New Light of Myanmar.

Asked when the election law would be introduced, Kyaw Hsan said: “Authorities concerned are making arrangements for all the matters in time.”

In the last election in 1990, several pro-regime parties, led by the National Unity Party (NUP), were registered. Allied parties of the NUP were the Worker Unity Party, the Farmer Unity Party and the Youth Unity Party.

Although those parties were strongly supported by the military regime, the opposition National League for Democracy won a landslide victory, getting more 80 percent of the seats.