Junta tight-lipped about election results

Burma’s secretive military-ruled government gave no sign today of when results from the country’s first election in two decades would be released, though it is almost certain power will remain in the hands of the junta and its political proxies.

What is unclear is whether the vote marks a small step toward democratic rule.

While most observers have rejected the poll as a sham engineered to solidify military control, even some critics say having a parliament for the first time in 22 years could provide an opening for eventual change.

There was little doubt that the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party would emerge with an enormous share of the parliamentary seats from yesterday’s poll, despite widespread popular opposition to 48 years of military rule.

It fielded 1,112 candidates for the 1,159 seats in the two-house national parliament and 14 regional parliaments, while the largest anti-government party, the National Democratic Force, contested just 164 spots.

Detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party won a landslide victory in the last elections in 1990 but was barred from taking office, urged a boycott of the vote.

Hundreds of potential opposition candidates were either in prison or, like Ms Suu Kyi, under house arrest.

The military has ruled Burma since 1962. Decades of human rights abuses and mistreatment of its ethnic minorities have turned the south east Asian nation into a diplomatic outcast.

The junta has squandered Burma’s vast natural resources through economic mismanagement and found itself allied with international pariahs like North Korea.

While the vote was widely condemned in the Western world, it was met with virtual silence by Burma’s chief ally, China, and economic partners in India and south east Asia.

Many voters said they wanted to cast their votes against the junta’s politicians.

“I cannot stay home and do nothing,” said Yi Yi, a 45-year-old computer technician in Rangoon.

“I have to go out and vote against USDP. That’s how I will defy them (the junta).”

Voter turnout appeared light at many polling stations in Rangoon, the country’s largest city. Some residents said they were staying home as rumours circulated that bombs would explode.

By late last night, some of the opposition politicians who took part in the elections were expressing dismay at what they called widespread cheating.

The junta and its proxy party “are so shameless in their utter craving for power that they brazenly rig votes with complete disregard for the people and the credibility of the election,” said Khin Maung Swe, a top official with the National Democratic Force. “They are desperately robbing votes.”