Burma in the grip of election fever
Election fever is already gripping Burma even though a date for the polls has yet to be announced. The election law which will govern the process is now expected to be published in May, with the elections at least six months away, according to Asian diplomats who closely follow events in Burma. “The elections will be held whether we like it or not,” a young Arakanese student in Rangoon, Nyi Nyi said.
“We know we will have no choice but to vote, our only hope is that there will be some candidates who are not stooges of the military regime,” he added. At the moment that seems a forlorn hope, though the main pro-democracy party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) has yet to make up its mind whether it will field candidates in this year’s elections.
In the last elections, held on May 27, 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won convincingly, but Burma’s military rulers never allowed them to form a civilian government. This time the generals are not planning to make the same mistake, and are tightly controlling everything to ensure they do not lose.
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