Bangkok (Mizzima) – Officially, the British government is taking a “wait-and-see” posture on the outcome of Burmese elections on Sunday, but, given the junta’s failure to even nearly satisfy international norms, the polls’ fairness was most unlikely, Britain’s envoy to Burma told reporters in Bangkok last night.
British Ambassador to Burma Andrew Heyn’s comments came as he shared his views at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Thailand. The failure of the Burmese government to come anywhere near the European Union’s guidelines for free and fair polls, Heyn said, left him only able to pass his personal verdict on the likely outcome: “I do not believe the elections will be free and fair; they will not be run freely and fairly, and they will not be representative.”
The majority of the ambassador’s presentation focused on a detailed and compelling argument to back up that claim.
EU guidelines indicated seven criteria for a properly-conducted election campaign: transparency of the process; existence of an effective, impartial and independent electoral commission; equal access for all candidates and parties to state resources; equal access to state-run media; an effective voter-education programme; a peaceful atmosphere; and, the presence of outside observers or monitors, he said.
With the dubious possible exception of a peaceful atmosphere, Heyn demonstrated point by point the failure of the Burmese regime to even attempt to live up to these ideals. Instead, there had been a steady programme of disenfranchisement of any party – such as Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) – that might challenge the military’s dominant role in Burmese politics, he said.
For example, the junta announced in mid-August that each candidate had a mere two weeks to post a non-refundable deposit to qualify to contest the polls, he said.
“The cost of putting up candidates, US$500 per candidate … is not a refundable deposit, it’s a fee you don’t get back,” Heyn said.
While this may not seem an enormous sum of money, Heyn said this requirement was coupled with a ban on opposition parties raising money outside Burma. This violated several of the EU guidelines, including those related to transparency and equal access, and was directly relevant to the NLD’s decision to boycott the elections.
Heyn said the British government respected the decisions of those in the democratic opposition who had decided to boycott the election, and those who had decided to contest it in the hopes of working from within the existing order. He added that both represented possible routes towards progress, and that Britain was averse to pre-judging or undermining either route.
What could the Britain do if, as expected, the election rubber-stamps the military’s lock on political power in Burma? Heyn said that if the unexpected happened and there were real signs of change, then the United Kingdom would be willing to rethink its hard line on Burma.
If the moderately pro-government National Unity Party (NUP) for example did as well as, or better than, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP, effectively a front for the military), and if the NUP seemed open to genuine change, then there was something to work with, he said. If not, sanctions had to remain in place, and the United Kingdom should consider what it, as sitting chair of the United Nations Security Council, could do to increase pressure on Burma.
“The United Kingdom has kept Burma very high on its international agenda,” the ambassador stated, and indicated two specific measures that could be taken.
One would be, with international co-operation, to place Burma in the same kind of “high priority” status under which Sudan was currently considered, he said. Another would be to push for a UN commission of inquiry into the Burmese regime’s human rights abuses.
Such a probe has been suggested in a proposal first made in March this year by UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Burma, Tomás Ojea Quintana, to which dozens of countries have added their open support.
Heyn, in response to questions, acknowledged that Britain and the West as a whole were limited in what they could do in this regard, given the co-operation afforded the Burmese regime by Asian nations, especially China and Thailand.
On a positive note, the ambassador was clearly proud of the efforts Britain in particular and the EU as a whole had made to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Burma, most recently in response to the aftermath of Cyclone Giri. He singled out Save the Children as an organisation that had provided food, water and shelter to the victims of that disaster.
Britain had pledged US$700,000 in relief aid to victims of the Category Storm that slammed into western Burma’s Arakan State on October 22, killed at least 50 and left more than 70,000 homeless, the United Nations office in Rangoon said on Wednesday.
