In India, when you find your leaders knocking on your door promising reforms or you hear loudspeakers blaring assurances of a better, prosperous future or see every square inch of public space taken over by posters with slogans that beg for your vote, you know what’s coming your way. It’s the elections! Months of campaigning that precedes the election day and millions of rupees that they gobble up are very much in your face. Quite literally.
Now turn six degrees to the east -- towards Burma. On November 7, people of Burma will vote for the first time in 20 years. However, the missing link in this attempt at electoral democracy is easy to spot -- large scale campaigns that spread awareness about options available to the public.
The Burmese elections have been largely dubbed by the West as a means of legitimising the military rule, far from being a free and fair democratic affair.
The strict campaigning rules laid down by the military prohibit participating political parties from waving flags, chanting slogans or organising processions. The campaigning procedures also require political parties to apply way in advance to seek permission to hold meetings or gather people and deliver speeches.
These severe restrictions have forced opposition leaders to carry out their campaign trails discretely. Most have been going door to door on foot, explaining to voters about the pressing need to “vote right”. Distributing pamphlets is seen as a risky proposition -- if the military finds any content that offends the “country or its rulers” the party could face a ban.
More than 3,300 candidates from over 37 political parties have registered to contest for the election. Some of these 37 parties, like the United Socialist and Development Party (USDP), are said to be proxies for the military junta -- a mechanism adopted by the rulers to retain power by pseudo-democratic means.
Complaints from opposition leaders about the difficulties in campaigning have been innumerable. However, the proxy parties have been allowed to campaign freely, devoid of any restrictions.
And this to many proponents of democracy is a major cause for concern. The lack of knowledge about the various parties contesting (fuelled by severe restrictions on campaigning) directly leads to an inability to distinguish the good from the bad. This may mean that the public might end up casting unintelligent or uninformed votes on election day.
The previous elections in Burma, held in 1990, saw Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi emerge as an iconic leader and win unprecedented. The power-hungry military, however, retained control forcefully and has kept Suu Kyi under house arrest for 14 of the last 20 years.
The 2007 Saffron revolution, which saw monks rise up against the regime in a rare show of political involvement, has been the trigger for the junta to declare elections this time around. The junta, however, seems to have learnt a lesson from its previous mistakes of allowing free campaigning, followed by a fair election. This time around, it seems to have found a way to meddle with the every democratic aspect of an election.
