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ABSTRACT
On November 8 the vast majority of Myanmar's citizens participated in what official observers – international and domestic – widely hailed as the most genuinely competitive, free, fair, and orderly parliamentary elections in the nation since 1990. Yet the poll, which resulted in a resounding victory for the National League for Democracy (NLD), surprised many observers, who expected that members of the ruling party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), would have done better through widely anticipated vote-rigging and manipulation of the results. Right up to a few days before the vote, observers were concerned about the possibility of a cancellation of the election as a result of politically motivated violence or, in the event they went ahead, administrative chaos resulting from errors in voters’ registration information and large-scale vote-rigging and manipulation by the ruling party. These fears were well-founded given that only 3 weeks prior to the elections, the government's Union Election Commission (UEC) proposed delaying the polls, citing recent floods that had devastated 12 out of Myanmar's 14 states and regions, killing 103 people and displacing 1 million others. This proposal predictably met strong resistance from the NLD and other opposition parties, which expected a strong public support for them in the poll.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Saw Eh Htoo and Tun Tun Lynn for their help in data collection and analysis in Myanmar. Thanks also to Gwen Robinson, Jeremy Liebowitz, Duncan McCargo, Sue Mark, Tun Tun Lynn, and Ne Lynn Zaw who offered their helpful comments. All errors are mine.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on Contributor
Ardeth Maung Thawngh is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA. A native of Myanmar, she holds a doctorate in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Notes
1Myoe Citation2015.
2EMR Citation2015a, 3.
3Ibid., 6–7.
4Dinmore and Guyitt Citation2015.
5Suu Kyi suggested to NLD MPs that they should take a twenty-five percent salary cut as a gesture to the poor. AFP Citation2015a. “Gross national income per capita 2014, Atlas method and PPP”, World Development Indicators database, World Bank, 29 December 2015 databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GNIPC.pdf.
6ICG Citation2015a, Citation2015b, 13.
7Author's conversation with ANP candidate, Yangon, July 2015.
8This development generated criticism among affected candidates and NLD supporters. Tha Citation2015.
9Thida Citation2015. Burma Partnership Citation2015.
10Holmes Citation2015.
11The Asia Foundation Citation2014, 43.
12Robinson Citation2015.
13Pwing Citation2015.
14Strangio Citation2015.
15This small, non-random survey was conducted by two local researchers between November 26 and 28. Respondents included nineteen residents of Yangon, seven from Ayeyarwaddy, two from the Bago region, two from Kayin state, and five from Mon state. The views expressed here by no means represent those of the general population. Another survey by the International Republican Institute in 2013 and 2014, whose findings have been contested by some civil societal groups and opposition political parties, found that 43 percent of 3000 respondents “strongly approve” the way then-President Thein Sein was handling his job and 88 percent thought the country was “heading in the right direction.” IRI Citation2014.
16Khaing Citation2015, 4.
17Herman Citation2008.
18Thawnghmung Citation2011.
19Transnational Institute Citation2010, 3–4.
20The Nationalities Brotherhood Federation (NBF) is composed of twenty-three ethnic parties that contested the 2010 elections; the Federal Democracy Alliance (FDA) is composed of fourteen smaller Bamar parties, including some ethnic parties; the United Nationalities Alliance (UNA) comprises eight ethnic parties that contested the 1990 elections and is aligned with the NLD. EMR Citation2015b; Transnational Institute Citation2015.
21Vote splitting is not the only reason for the overwhelming defeat of ethnic political parties since the NLD received more votes than ethnic parties combined in most ethnic constituencies where it won. ICG Citation2015a.
22See note 16.
23This also applies to Karen state, and to some extent, Mon state.
24Snaing Citation2015.
25ICG Citation2015b, 4; AFP Citation2015b.
26Seth Citation2015.
27Joliffe Citation2014, 11.
28Transnational Institute Citation2014, 11.