Election
- Myanmar
Myanmar’s Kaman Muslims look to elections to restore their rights
In October two years ago, Zaw Lin ran to the top of a forested hill behind his thatch-roof farm house in this tiny hamlet of Pauktaw in Myanmar’s southern Rakhine state. His family is Muslim. He and his relatives were running for their lives as sword-wielding Rakhine Buddhists, angry about reports of a Buddhist woman allegedly raped by Muslim men in nearby Thandwe, were on the rampage, torching down Muslim houses and now about to enter his village. While he was running away with his wife and two children, Zaw Lin said he managed to call a police station, two miles away from his village to ask for help. But none came. Although his family survived, dozens of Muslim houses including his own in Pauktaw were burned to the ground and a 91-year-old Muslim woman was tossed into the fire by a Buddhist mob in the neighbouring village of Thebyu Chai. He says he does not bear grudge against his Buddhist neighbours. “We all were victims. The Rakhine Buddhists were also used by those who wanted to exploit the religion for attacks against Muslims,” he said, while sitting on the bamboo floor of the house he rebuilt after the violence…
- Myanmar
Ruling USDP commands shy support in Myanmar’s elections
Twenty-two-year-old Lu Zaw took a day’s leave from his office job this week to join a political rally of the Union Solidarity and Development Party, but found it hard to explain his instinctive loyalty to Myanmar’s ruling party. His uncle is a senior party campaigner, recruiting new members for USDP in Yangon’s Thinganggyun Township. Lu Zaw said he was taking part in the rally, not at the behest of his uncle, but by his own volition, despite the fact that political rallies were not his favourite scene. As Myanmar prepares for historic elections on Sunday, a vote that the opposition National League for Democracy of Aung San Suu Kyi is widely expected to win, there are still many loyal to the ruling party. Led by former general Thein Sein, the USDP’s semi-civilian government has steered the Southeast Asian nation through a series of economic and political reforms since it came to power in 2011, ending half a century of military rule. “Even if the whole country supports NLD, I will vote for USDP,” said Lu Zaw. USDP rallies, with supporters decked in the party’s colour green, seem to lack the zeal and spontaneity of campaign events organized by Suu Kyi’s…
- Myanmar
In Myanmar, not all votes are created equal
When millions of Myanmar citizens go to the polls on Nov. 8, many will be hoping their votes can help make the country a freer and fairer place after half a century of iron-fisted military rule that has impoverished a once-promising nation. An estimated 33.5 million voters will be electing 325 Lower House parliamentarians, but a structural quirk within Myanmar’s electoral system means not all votes will carry equal weight: votes in the smallest constituencies have several hundred times more influence in the Lower House than those in the country’s biggest constituencies. This is mainly because Lower House constituencies in Myanmar are based on townships, whose populations vary widely. “It’s fairly unusual to have an election with a constituency with 500,000 people and another with 5,000 people in the same election, electing the same number of seats. It’s just unfair to the population,” an election expert told Myanmar Now, declining to be named due to the sensitive nature of the topic. Such wide disparities in population among voting districts are an electoral characteristic commonly referred to by political scientists as “malapportionment.” Malapportionment appears to undermine the fairness of “one man, one vote,” a central tenet of democracy, and raises questions…
- Myanmar
As polls near, attacks in Mon State capital raise fears of communal violence
Several unexplained night-time attacks on members of different religious communities in Mawlamyine have put the Mon State capital on edge in recent weeks. Community leaders fear the attacks are attempts to foment inter-communal tensions here in the run up to Myanmar’s Nov. 8 polls. One victim, Paung Paung, a Hindu resident in his early 20s, said he and his two brothers had watched a football game at a teashop on Sept. 26 and were walking home on the city’s Strand Road when some men suddenly assaulted them. “They called us ‘Kalar sons of bitches’ and beat us. We said we are Hindus and not Muslims, but they wouldn’t listen,” he told Myanmar Now, using a Myanmar derogatory term for people of South Asian descent. He ended up with a large gash on his head that required 20 stitches. “These are not ordinary local gangs that sometimes fight on Strand Road; they seemed well-organised,” Paung Paung said. On the same night, Nyein Htwe, a 25-year-old Muslim from Yangon who was visiting family in Mawlamyine, drove past Zegyo Market with a friend when their way was blocked by a motorbike. “Then, some 20 men on 10 motorbikes attacked us from behind with…
- Myanmar
“Joining a Ma Ba Tha event is a USDP member’s right and choice”
Dr. Toe Toe Aung is the Mon State Minister for Civil Development for the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). He is contesting a seat in the state capital Mawlamyine and hopes to secure reelection in the state parliament on Nov. 8. Born in the town, he graduated from Yangon University of Medicine (2) in 1996 and worked at Mon State’s Health Department until 2010, when he was elected to the state legislature. The 2010 polls were considered rigged in favour of the USDP. In an interview with Myanmar Now reporter Phyo Thiha Cho at the party’s regional headquarters in Mawlamyine, the 45-year-old medical doctor discussed his campaign challenges and the links between the nationalist Ma Ba Tha movement and the USDP in Mon State. Question: What are the challenges for you as a USDP state minister seeking re-election on Nov. 8? Answer: I have been close touch with people in my constituency for more than four years, since the time when our party was still a civilian organisation, the Union Solidarity and Development Association (the predecessor of the USDP). I will keep working for the welfare of people, either as an MP or as a member of government.…
