Myanmar’s still long road ahead

On Wednesday, the Carnegie Endowment hosted a panel discussion on Myanmar’s November 8 elections: ‘What happened and what happens now?’ featuring William Sweeney, president and CEO of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES); U Aung Din, senior adviser at the Open Myanmar Institute; and Christina Fink, professor of practice in International Affairs at George Washington University, The panel was moderated by Carnegie Senior Associate Vikram Nehru.

Sweeney painted an optimistic picture of the elections, in which Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won a staggering 80% of the three quarters of parliamentary seats up for contention in both lower and upper houses (the final quarter being reserved for the military). IFES had worked with Myanmar’s Union Election Commission for three years on several aspects of national elections: stakeholder engagement, updating the national voter list, voter education, women’s leadership, and inclusion of people with disabilities.

The breadth and inclusivity of the 33.5 million-person voter list was particularly impressive, with its complete digitization and incorporation of 6.5 million corrections, checked and checked again on a local level. Sweeney pointed out that an inaccurate or incomplete voter list is often the thing that prevents citizens from voting once they reach the polls.

Despite this promising achievement, there is still a long road ahead to reach stable democratic governance. There will be a four-month transition process. As Din pointed out, there are no clear candidates for president, nominated by parliament. The candidate has to be palatable to both parties and cannot have a military background. The constitution bars Suu Kyi from becoming president because her sons are British citizens, but she plans to play the leading role: ‘the president will have no authority,’ she has said.

This transition takes place in the context of long-running civil wars and ongoing peace processes. Fink stated that there is a complex field of contention, with multiple ethnic-minority armed groups arrayed against the military and a long history of distrust. The military and President Thein Sein aren’t united on strategy, with the army continuing to advance into ethnic minority territory.

While a ceasefire was finally signed in October, and passed on Tuesday, only eight of the fifteen armed rebel groups have signed the agreement, which Fink believes plays into the military’s favored strategy of divide and rule. Further, Suu Kyi and the NLD have not as yet weighed in on the issue of the conflict with ethnic rebels or the peace process, though Suu Kyi has has at least stated that her cabinet will have minority representation.

Though there were ethnic minority candidates running with the NLD, no ethnic-minority political party made significant gains in the elections, which also centers the focus on how Suu Kyi will deal with the issue of minority political representation. There were no Muslim candidates at all with the NLD – as Din pointed out, the NLD intentionally excluded them. In Sweeney’s view, lack of Muslim representation is something society at large, as well as all the political parties, will have to confront.

Myanmar is now in a transition period, economically as well as politically, which increases feelings of insecurity and sentiments of exclusionary nationalism amongst its populace, in Fink’s view. Sweeney highlighted interesting parallels with the debate about immigration and citizenship in Europe and the US, as much of Myanmar’s Muslim population immigrated to the country decades ago, and yet have not acquired citizenship.

With the accomplishment of successful elections behind them, Myanmar needs to continue to negotiate issues of citizenship and reconciliation in the hopes of building a more inclusive society.