BURMA: Microscopic opening

After two decades of refusing to honour the results of the last elections, held back in 1990, the recent electoral exercise in Burma gave plenty of lead-up time for long-suffering observers to sharpen their critiques. Combine that with the blatant pre-poll manipulations by the junta – pushing through a referendum on a stacked new constitution that gave the military 25 percent of the newly created Parliament seats, imposing a massive USD 500 fee to register candidates, and releasing the tweaked election laws mere months before the polls opened. Then, put this in the context of the decades of crushing authoritarianism, the continued absence of guarantees of basic human or civil rights, approaches to the national economy that border on outright theft from the national coffers, the continued incarceration of more than 2000 political prisoners, and the absence of the main opposition party from the polls. Given all this, by the time the 7 November elections finally rolled around, there was little surprise that most observers had made up their minds on the elections – and written them off entirely.

By now, however, the polls have taken place. The 'results', such as they were, have been announced, and the creaky state machinery has been put in motion to oversee and facilitate the largest potential changes in Burma politics in decades. Himal empathises with the debate that went on prior to the elections, particularly the scepticism. But reflexive fatalism, even if grounded in solid and arduous experience, holds the danger of missing a significant if tenuous opportunity: if nothing else, to change the tenor of the public discussion in Burma. For this reason, we suggest that political engagement – that is, engagement with both the new realities and new potentials – is of critical importance.