Burma military rulers claims plans to hold democratic elections in 2010
The country's last election was in 1990, but the military refused to hand over power when Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won. Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace prize winner, has been in prison or under house arrest for more than 12 of the past 18 years. So what will be different this time?
An official statement, released on state radio and television on Saturday, said that "the time has now come to change from military rule to democratic civilian rule".
An NLD spokeman says the convention is
a front to put a civilian face on military rule. Suu Kyi has criticized the process because it excludes pro-democracy parties and representatives of Myanmar's numerous ethnic groups.
According to the Chiang Mai-based academic Win Min,
"It seems that General Than Shwe has changed his mind and is no longer using the seven-point road map to buy time, but instead it is now central to his efforts to overcome both internal and international pressures,""Internally the generals may be worried about further mass unrest, and are using the promise of elections to cool people down and encourage them not to do demonstrate, but to wait and see," he said. "The junta promised elections after crackdown on the 8-8-88 mass movement for the same reason."
"Than Shwe has been constantly considering all his options and examining all the possible scenarios in order to have a strategic plan which will ensure he retains power and protects his family's interests in the long-run," said a senior source in the new capital Naypitdaw who is close to the military leader. "For sometime the roadmap was a back-up strategy, but after the crackdown on the protests last year, it became the main option to keep political control."
"I don't see a genuine willingness to go back to democracy," said Win Min, a lecturer in contemporary Burmese politics at Payap University in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. "If they wanted to go toward democracy they wouldn't have to keep arresting democracy activists. And they would release Aung San Suu Kyi."
"I am not interested in their referendum because the results are known already,'' said 48-year old noodle salad seller Mar Mar Aye, echoing the popular belief that the government is confident its constitution will be approved.
It may be a tactic by the military to ease international pressure to reform after it violently suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations in what was coined the Saffron Revolution. The crackdown on peaceful protest marches led by Buddhist monks killed at least 31 people and injured many more with an unknown number of arrests.
Extra:
TIMELINE: Myanmar's slow road to a new constitution
Key facts about Myanmar, Asia's troubled state
