YANGON - Myanmar’s Union Election Commission (UEC) is facing an avalanche of criticism as voting day nears, including an accusation from the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) that it has used civil conflict as an excuse to cancel voting in constituencies the party was confident of winning.
There is also concern about a plan to issue identity cards to some voters and an overriding concern about the effect on the election of advance voting, which helped the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) to win the vote in 2010 that was boycotted by the National League for Democracy, currently the official opposition.
Reacting to the UEC's Oct 27 decision to cancel the vote in two townships in northern Shan State, the SNLD said the areas included some of its most important constituencies.
"We were certain of winning in those constituencies," SNLD spokesperson U Sai Lek told Frontier Myanmar magazine.
The decision to cancel voting in the townships followed reports of an escalation in fighting between the military and the Shan State Army (SSA) and Shan State Progress Party (SSPP).
"I think the government wants to put pressure on the SSA/SSPP, which was not involved in the national ceasefire agreement, by postponing the election in those townships," U Sai Lek said. "It is nonsense," he said.
There's also concern among many parties over the decision announced by the UEC in August to issue the nation's 32 million voters with identity cards for the ballot. The UEC initially said it had decided to issue the voter identity cards to citizens who had lost their national identity documents in the widespread flooding that occurred in both July and August.
However, the UEC has not clearly explained the system, nor how the cards will be issued before the nation goes to the polls, and the move has added to concerns about advance voting fraud.
Suspicions over advance voting have also risen since the government began collecting personal information about public servants last month, as well as about employees of some private schools and companies.
A lecturer at the International Language and Business Centre said all teaching staff there had been required to provide voting list data to senior managers at the school. It was then provided to the government, which collects data on teachers.
"We did not know whether our votes will be for the USDP or the NLD [National League for Democracy]; we were not given a choice," the lecturer said.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has been collecting voting list data from villages and remote areas for the past two months, Frontier Myanmar was told.
"It was an order from above to collect the data, but I don’t know what they are going to do with it; we’re just collecting it and submitting it to the department," a clerk at the ministry, U Myint Htay, said, referring to the General Administration Department.
Responding to criticism from political parties and election monitoring groups last week about the advance voting by public servants in Nay Pyi Taw, Information Minister and presidential spokesman U Ye Htut said a similar procedure was used in 2010 and 2012. Some public servants in Nay Pyi Taw also provided voter list information to officials last week.
U Ye Htut said in a Facebook post that it was more convenient for public servants to vote en masse or provide voter list data ahead of election day because they did not have cars and would need to arrange transport.
"We did the same in the 2010 and 2012 elections," said U Ye Htut, who did not mention in his Facebook post that similar exercises were taking place elsewhere throughout the country.
The UEC says that of the nation's 32 million voters, 1,031,559 have applied to cast ballots in constituencies other than their own. Voters living outside their constituencies can say where they want to cast their ballots, but it is unclear how the UEC is responding to this information.
Despite a lack of transparency involving advance voting by public servants, the party preferences of Myanmar nationals living in Singapore who voted in mid-October are already known. Exit polls conducted by Support Group (Singapore) showed the NLD won 90% of the vote, followed by the Rakhine National Party and the Mon National Party.
Another issue concerns election monitoring at military bases. The head of the European Union’s election observer mission, Alexander Lambsdorff, told reporters in Yangon on Oct 20 that Tatmadaw Commander-in-Chief Sen Gen Min Aung Hlaing had agreed that monitoring would be allowed on bases.
National Democratic Force executive committee member U Khin Maung Swe said the USDP has lost the advantage of “authority” that it had in 2010 because of its relationship with the junta. The election this year is not like 2010 because there is more media freedom, he said.
However, U Khin Maung Swe said he doubted that advance votes would be as big a problem as in 2010, when they cost the NDF many seats in which it had been leading when counting stopped on election day.
"It's not that easy to cheat this year," he said. "Media and election monitoring groups will be closely watching."
Credit: Frontier Myanmar