Myanmar on the Road Towards the 2020 Elections: A Pre-electoral Assessment

Abstract

The Myanmar general elections, which have been organized under the auspices of the Union Election Commission (UEC), take place in five-year terms. The 2015 elections had been regarded similar to a referendum against military rule, which led to a government with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as State Counsellor. The 2020 polls were expected to be more competitive, and the entire electoral system to become more tested than before. However, half a year prior to the 8 November 2020 general elections, neither the election date nor the further course of the COVID-19 pandemic were clear. The outbreak of the pandemic compounded already existing weaknesses and risks in the electoral process. This chapter reviews the pre-electoral situation, the legal framework for elections, the election administration, voter registration, the political party landscape, the campaign and campaign finance framework, as well as the local cancellation of elections and their impact in Rakhine State in particular. Furthermore, it also discusses social media and election observation, taking COVID-19 into account.

This chapter presents an updated version of a study with the same title published by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung (HBS) in Yangon, Myanmar, with a creative commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) in July 2020. HBS supported the production of the pre-electoral assessment, which drew on the language and findings of past election observation missions in Myanmar as well as on 25 online interviews with a variety of stakeholders. These included representatives of the election administration, political parties, the media, civil society organisations, technical assistance providers, national and international election observers, and independent experts. The pre-electoral assessment ends with the beginning of the electoral campaign period two months before election day.

Post-Scriptum

The 2020 election results clearly confirmed the NLD in office. Despite initial acceptance of the election results, the armed forces increasingly contested the electoral outcomes. On 1 February 2021, hours before the new legislature was scheduled to convene and proceed with the election of a new President, the Tatmadaw staged a coup d’état based on a narrative of electoral fraud, referring in particular to faulty voter lists. It is important to state, however, that any intentional tempering with the election results was not apparent. As tensions mounted prior to the coup, a broad coalition of national election observers clearly stated that “the elections were credible and reflected the will of the majority voters”.³⁶

Nevertheless, the military argued “It is not the outcome itself of the elections that the Tatmadaw is objecting to in its interaction with the UEC and the NLD-led government (…) rather, the Tatmadaw finds the process of the 2020 election unacceptable”³⁷ and re-iterated historical positions of the armed forces as the guardian of the nation. Alongside other state institutions and dignitaries, the military quickly replaced and detained the leadership of the UEC, announced probing into the electoral proceedings of 2020 as well as revisions of voter registration and the electoral system, and fresh elections within a certain timeframe. Against the unfolding drama in the aftermath of the military takeover, these statements appeared implausible. However, it is possible that the Tatmadaw will again employ narratives of electoral fraud and approaches to change the electoral framework to their benefit in the future.