The junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) will be challenged by only the former ruling socialist party, the National Unity Party (NUP), for 132 seats in both houses of parliament in Sunday's general election.

Leaders of ethnic ceasefire groups have apparently decided to take advantage of the political space opened up by the Nov. 7 election, while at the same time preparing for possible hostilities with the Burmese Army when the voting is over.

Burma’s controversial election, its first in 20 years, is only days away.

 

Kyaw Zwa Moe is managing editor of the Irrawaddy magazine. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Most of the country’s pro-democracy groups say the election is “undemocratic and

CHIANG MAI — on October 18, Thein Soe, the chief of Burma’s Union Election Commission (UEC), announced that the international media would not be allowed to report on the country’s upcoming elections.

Burma's Election Commission has begun an education campaign on voting less than two weeks before the election, featuring videos on state-run MRTV, but one of the messages does not conform to its own electoral law in defining “advance [early] voters.”

If you look at the election strategy of the Burmese military regime, you will find it has ensured control of a majority of seats in the parliament even before the election.

RANGOON — The political temperature is rising rapidly in Burma as the country prepares for its first election in two decades on Nov. 7 amid uncertainty about the possibility that the National Unity Party (NUP) could upset the ruling regime's plans for an overwhelming victory by the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

With the emergence of new political players after the Nov. 7 election, there has been an assumption that the opposition movement led by the National League for Democracy (NLD) will effectively be marginalized in post-election politics in Burma.

The fact that Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy was disbanded by Burma's ruling junta wasn't unexpected news. The government's Election Commission announcement on Tuesday is just a legal phase of the annihilation that the regime began plotting years ago.

Given the blatant bias by authorities and the Union Election Commission towards the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), critics say that the result of the elections is already known generally. The USDP and the National Unity Party are the main rivals in most of the constituencies with little challenge by the National Democratic Force and and other parties.