Myanmar: The junta-organised ‘election’ is a poorly-crafted illusion. India must not fall for it

The junta in Myanmar, which snatched power through a coup in 2021 and now calls itself the State Security and Peace Commission, is about to conduct a heavily stage-managed, geographically restricted and politically stunted “election”. The first phase will take place on Sunday, the second phase on January 11 and potentially a third phase on a yet unannounced date.

According to data collated by the Asian Network for Free Elections, only 99 out of the country’s 330 townships – the country’s basic administrative unit – are slated to vote in full. Ninety three others will likely post a partial ballot. Ten townships are expected to vote only the areas that are controlled by the military and not in the tracts controlled by the resistance. The military regime has entirely cancelled voting in 56 townships.

Geographically, most of the polling is slated to take place in the central part of the Bamar heartland, the Irrawaddy deltaic region, Yangon region, parts of the eastern ethnic states bordering Thailand, parts of northern Kachin State bordering China and India, and a few patches across the southeasternmost coastal regions.

Large parts of the country remain under resistance control, negating the possibility of any campaigning or polling.

What ‘election’?

By no standard can such a territorially constricted election be considered a genuine democratic exercise. Besides, some of Myanmar’s largest civilian parties, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, the influential Shan National League for Democracy and more than four dozen others, are not participating in the junta’s electoral exercise.

While the junta-appointed election commission dissolved these parties under a newly-enacted election registration law 2023, most of them would have anyway likely boycotted the polls as a mark of protest against the coup regime, not unlike in 2010 when the National League for Democracy boycotted a similar junta-held “election” that put in place a quasi-civilian government led by President Thein Sein.

While both elections must be placed squarely within inverted quotes, there is a crucial difference.

The 2010 moment paved the way for Myanmar’s first free and fair election five years later, partly due to Sein’s consultative leadership style and a difficult but long-due peace process between the government in the national capital of Naypyidaw and ethnic armed organisations that helped repair some of the trust deficit between the centre and ethnic peripheries.

This time, the “election” is being held under the stewardship of junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, an obstinate political figure who is disinterested in federal democracy-building, lacks a grand political vision and fancies a firm grip on power.

In refusing to cede power back to a civilian government and instead, waging a war against his own people, Hlaing has not only bulldozed the delicate relationship between Naypyidaw and the ethnic minorities, but also alienated and provoked the very same Bamar majority from which the military draws legitimacy.

In a conspicuous show of his pathological insecurity and awareness that most of his own people reject the sham polls, Hlaing has been using a draconian election law to order the arrest of hundreds for criticising the election plan. Thus, the uncertain yet genuine sense of cautious optimism that seemed to shadow the 2010 election is completely missing in the upcoming “election”, which rests on half a decade of bloodshed, distrust and despondency.

Optimism or self-interest?

Despite the grave cynicism among the people of Myanmar, governments in the immediate neighbourhood, flustered by nearly five years of armed conflict, economic decay and political instability, have quietly wagered on the upcoming “elections” as a pathway towards stability and predictability, if not peace.

In this, they are guided by a culture of foreign policy pragmatism drilled deep into modern Asian statecraft, which seeks a strong central government, stable provincial centres, a flexible economy and manageable frontiers. It has little time for disruptive social or political movements next door, let alone a revolution. In fact, the word “revolution” is anathema for government officials and their policy allies in most of Myanmar’s neighbourhood, not least because it generates a sense of anxiety about the political status quo in their own countries.

This is true even for the Communist Party of China, which was born out of the crucible of a historic revolution but has moderated itself over the decades for the sake of statecraft and geopolitics. In fact, the Xi Jinping government has emerged as the Myanmar junta’s leading backer today.

It has thrown all its weight behind the “elections”, and helped the coup regime stabilise large parts of northern Myanmar by forcing warring ethnic groups to cease fire. India and Thailand have followed in lockstep, extending notional support to the junta’s “elections”, although without the accompanying strategic groundwork that China has done in Myanmar.

All three know well that polling will be far from free and fair, but are willing to bet some of their cards on the process, hoping that it yields a set of outcomes that is favourable to their own strategic interests. In doing so, they are willing to either overlook or undermine the aspirations of the majority of the people of Myanmar who see the junta as their sworn enemy and will not accept any election that is held under the military-drafted 2008 constitution.

It is precisely this self-serving realpolitik optimism about an impending positive transition in Myanmar that the junta seeks to exploit through an illusory electoral exercise.

Faux franchise

There is also a general view in government (or pro-government) circles in some of Myanmar’s neighbours that the election would force Hlaing to be accountable to his own people. They believe an exercise in franchise will ultimately humble him. This is a view that is naïve at best, and foolish at worst. It ignores two things about the “election”.

One, the junta has closely curated the electoral landscape and polling architecture in a way that makes a loss virtually impossible. By dissolving Myanmar’s most popular political parties, allowing pro-military parties, such as the Union Solidarity and Development Party, to seek a mandate, and switching from a first-past-the-post to a proportional representation system, it has ensured that political power remains firmly in the military’s own stead even before polling begins.

The Asian Network for Free Elections has also shown that the Electronic Voting Machines that the junta has deployed for the polls were introduced without any consultation, consensus or trials, which opens up serious possibilities of large-scale fraud. In such a structurally rigged and thoroughly opaque electoral system, the win-loss binary becomes utterly meaningless.

Two, despite the spokesperson for the junta stating otherwise, the key target audience of “election” is not the people of Myanmar, but rather, regional governments and entities like ASEAN who have preconditioned their support for the regime on a notional transition to democracy. Therefore, the question of domestic accountability does not arise.

For Hlaing, holding the election, no matter how staged it might seem, is a path back to regional diplomatic circles.

In fact, it is China that Hlaing wishes to primarily placate through the elections. Beijing, frustrated by a lack of progress on Belt and Road Initiative projects in post-coup Myanmar and Hlaing’s abject failure to restore peace, believes that an election might calm the waters. It is also aware that any government that emerges out of the junta would be beholden to Chinese interests, not least because of the critical support that Beijing has extended to the military rulers in taming a set of powerful of ethnic rebels in the north.

Backing the “election”, therefore, is China’s way to consolidate its influence in Myanmar’s Bamar heartland at a time when the US seems to have retracted from the country. The costs of its realpolitik geopolitics are, of course, severe – it stands to become even more unpopular in a country where large parts of the population already see their northern neighbour as a disruptive and extractive force.

But, this is a cost that Beijing is willing to pay to ensure that its high-speed road and rail corridors cutting across Myanmar are completed on time.

The Indian play

The lesson here is for the others around Myanmar, including India. Any support for the junta’s election, even if in notional terms, could be seen as an attempt to legitimise the coup regime. In fact, it could disturb the relationship that India has quietly built with ethnic armed organisations in western Myanmar, most prominently the powerful Arakan Army and Chin groups that now control territory through which the New Delhi-funded Kaladan project passes. The multi-crore project aims to connect Kolkata with Northeast India via the Sittwe port in Myanmar’s Rakhine state by sea, river and land.

Yet, it is clear that New Delhi is not cutting itself loose from the junta yet. In fact, in the upcoming “election”, the Narendra Modi government sees an avenue to rationalise its relationship with the junta and, as a recent meeting between the two sides indicated, find “better opportunities” to work together. For India, a strong central government in Naypyidaw, regardless of its political provenance and popular legitimacy, is an ideal partner to work with.

This emanates from a longstanding Indian diplomatic posture to engage with whoever is in power in the Burmese capital. But, seen from another angle, it is a reflection of the Modi government’s own preference of a centralised democracy over a federal one at home. The home and the world collapse into each other in foreign policy decision-making more often than we might believe.

It is unlikely that the resistance groups with which India has built a rapport over the last year will abruptly sever their ties with New Delhi if the Modi government endorses the “election” result. But, India’s choice to do so may certainly leave a bitter taste among Myanmar’s pro-democracy forces who see in their western neighbour an exemplar model of federal democracy that is worth emulating in the Burmese context, unlike the Chinese model of a one-party authoritarian state that is ill-fitted to Myanmar’s rich multi-ethnic sociopolitical landscape.

India must capitalise on this critical distinction. To do so, it must slowly but surely expand its relations with the pro-democracy groups next door. Simultaneously, it must scale down its ties with the grossly unpopular military regime and any subsequent quasi-civilian government that Hlaing might install, while quietly building strategic clout in western Myanmar’s ethnic pockets where almost every group remains keen on working with India for mutual benefit.

The key here is to keep the ear to the ground and listen to the aspirations and suffering of the people, rather than the self-serving fantasies of a rogue military clique that has never been serious about protecting Indian security interests. It is only by adopting a truly people-centric foreign policy that India can kill two birds with a stone: outsmart China in its own backyard, and build political-strategic depth in a rapidly transforming Myanmar.

Angshuman Choudhury is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Asian Studies jointly at the National University of Singapore and King’s College London.