Myanmar Will Not Hold an ‘Election’ in August 2023

By Matthew B. Arnold 17 November 2022

An election is known to imply “a proper and arranged selection by vote of an individual for a political workplace or different place.” Myanmar’s junta has claimed it should set up an ‘election’ for August 2023. Don’t name it what it isn’t. The junta’s occasion, no matter it’s and appears like, will under no circumstances be an election. If analysts, media, and diplomats use the time period ‘election’, the onus is on them to justify and show why and the way precisely it wasn’t reputable when in reality it wasn’t even what occurred.

This isn’t nearly semantics. It’s about establishing the factual foundation for what’s transpiring in actuality. Autocrats who co-opt democratic phrases are very skillful at doing so to create a story that they’re one thing they aren’t. One of the simplest ways to stop that is to cease permitting them to freely use phrases they don’t have any foundation for utilizing. Merely put — democracies have to cease letting dictatorships co-opt the terminology of democracy. By not pushing again, and by not introducing new terminology that precisely describes what dictatorships are doing, it permits the autocrats of the world to assert legitimacy by dressing up their actions with phrases that ought to by no means have been used within the first place.

When Myanmar’s generals say “self-discipline flourishing democracy”, it means dictatorship. When Xi Xinping says there’s a “Chinese language-style democracy” and an “American-style democracy”, he’s spouting utter nonsense. China underneath the Communist Get together is a totalitarian dictatorship from high to backside and under no circumstances is a democracy. Much more onerously totalitarian and unquestionably not a democracy is North Korea, the so-called “Democratic Folks’s Republic of Korea”. Claims of elections in such international locations are nonsense. Having a ‘selection’ of 1 individual picked by one social gathering doesn’t make for an election.

In Myanmar in 2008 a ‘referendum’ on the 2008 Structure by no means occurred. This was a coerced, fraudulent train that under no circumstances mirrored the desire of the individuals and even marginally synced with the intentions of the time period ‘referendum’. The truth that the train occurred within the speedy aftermath of Cyclone Nargis highlights this level, specifically that the train was coerced, predetermined, and by no means had any intention of representing the desire of the Myanmar individuals. The unhappy factor is that as a result of this time period was used so extensively and have become mainstream, together with in worldwide media, over time it grew to become, by default, accepted as what occurred. This then lent unlucky credence to the 2008 Structure. The identical is true for the 2010 election. Myanmar’s solely free and honest elections in its trendy historical past, despite the fact that problematic in essential methods, had been the by-elections beginning in 2012 and the overall elections of 2015 and 2020.

As regards the junta’s plans for a 2023 ballot, commentators within the media, civil society or diplomacy that use phrases and phrases like “sham elections” or “elections underneath navy rule” sadly begin the discourse from a drawback. They inherently power these rightly accusing dictators of being dictators to show that the ‘election’ wasn’t ok for this or that motive, when what occurred wasn’t even an election within the first place. If one begins the dialog with a false time period, it inherently lends legitimacy to whoever is claiming that time period as being true. This method grew to become mainstream after being adopted by former United States President Donald Trump, when he referred to as the 2020 US election “fraudulent”.

Phrases matter. They matter as a result of they set narratives about what is going on or what’s going to occur. By permitting the junta to make use of the time period ‘election’ and to state that it’s going to happen in August 2023, it catalyzes the broader worldwide narrative about what’s taking place in Myanmar. In easy phrases, it creates the axis round which coverage discourses start to swirl about what to do as regards the nation. Inside Myanmar even when some fraudulent, coerced occasion happens in August 2023 it is not going to really do something to cease the revolution towards the junta as a result of the Myanmar individuals have made it clear in a thousand ways in which they don’t settle for a return to navy rule. Internationally, although, the navy regime is utilizing this time period to create the phantasm of a transparent “roadmap” of what the world can count on. Whereas some international locations have already referred to as out the junta’s plans and mentioned that they received’t settle for the results of any ‘election’, different international locations are clearly simply ready for the junta to declare the occasion successful, even when will probably be the regime’s proxies and newly-retired generals who will ‘win’.

There’s a story unfolding in Myanmar, but it surely doesn’t match what the junta is saying. An August report from the Particular Advisory Council for Myanmar highlighted that the junta solely has secure management over 17 per cent of the nation. The remainder of the nation is in lively and escalating armed resistance towards junta forces or is managed by ethnic armed organizations that don’t settle for navy rule of their areas, even when they keep ceasefires with the navy.

Therefore, this can be a nation of roughly 55 million individuals in a sustained, dedicated revolution that’s centered on constructing a greater future for themselves and future generations. It isn’t nearly eliminating the navy or the Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nation’s myopic “returning to normalcy” tomfoolery, in different phrases a poisonous quasi-democracy constructed round navy paramountcy. It’s about making a basically completely different nation constructed round actual federal democracy. Because the Nationwide Unity Authorities’s Performing President Duwa Lashi La has so profoundly said: that is the second warfare for independence. Myanmar’s individuals need to begin afresh.

The world ought to cease accepting the Myanmar navy’s use of the time period ‘election’ utterly as a result of that isn’t what’s going to occur. The navy’s occasion — which can undoubtedly be preordained, coercive, extremely violent and under no circumstances an election in any which means of the phrase — is just not the pole round which the battle within the nation can be resolved. A greater time period doesn’t at the moment exist within the English language, however certainly one must be created alongside the strains of “coerced deception”.

In essence, don’t settle for the regime’s narrative that there’s a pathway to peace and stability and that the important thing date is August 2023. There’s a pathway to peace in Myanmar, but it surely means the entire defeat of the present navy and the implementation of the roadmap articulated by the Federal Democracy Constitution drawn up by the democratic resistance’s Nationwide Unity Consultative Council.

Matthew B. Arnold is an unbiased coverage analyst. He has been researching Myanmar’s politics and governance since 2012.