Myanmar’s elections will be neither free nor fair. But could they rattle the deadly status quo? |
On December 28, war-torn Myanmar will go to the polls. In a way.
No one really believes the long-promised elections will be free, fair or even close to representative.
Illustration by Joe BenkeCredit:
“Sham”, actually, is the word that keeps popping up.
Ballot boxes won’t appear nationwide, of course; only places controlled by the despised military regime and its warlord partners.
Reports have emerged recently of junta types going door to door in Mandalay leaning on would-be voters. Some citizens have also been arrested for uncomplimentary social media posts.
But even if the conclusion is foregone, is there a world in which the elections could in some way lead to a breakthrough in soothing almost five years of Myanmar’s latest iteration of civil war?
Maybe, just maybe, says Morgan Michaels, a Myanmar expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank.
Firstly, though, it’s important to know that the military is headed by a bumbling and ruthless general. He is Min Aung Hlaing, a 69-year-old career army officer with a reputation for talking instead of listening.
Since taking power from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a February 2021 coup, Min Aung Hlaing and his cronies have busied themselves wrecking the economy, overseeing huge territorial losses, conscripting destitute young men, locking up and torturing political nuisances, and bombing opposition groups and civilians.
Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing.Credit: AP
The regime’s multi-front war against myriad well-equipped ethnic and peoples’ resistance armies has killed tens of thousands of combatants and........