Don't give up Burma!!! The International community knows this election is a complete SHAM! Stand strong! We stand with the Burmese people!
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Reuters News
written by Aung Hla Tun
Saturday November 6, 2010 9:17pm EDT
(Reuters) - Polls opened under tight security in Myanmar's first election in 20 years Sunday, a scripted vote that assures army-backed parties an easy win but brings a hint of parliamentary politics to the isolated, oppressive state.
The carefully choreographed end of direct army rule, marred by complex rules that stifled major pro-democracy forces, enters its final stage in a race largely between two powerful military-backed parties running virtually unopposed.
The vote won't bring an end to Western sanctions but could reduce Myanmar's isolation in Asia at a time when neighboring China has dramatically increased investments in natural gas and other resources in the former British colony also known as Burma.
In the commercial hub of Yangon, armed riot police stood guard at near-empty polling booths early Saturday or patrolled streets in convoys of military trucks, part of a clampdown that includes bans on foreign media and on outside election monitors.
It is the first vote since 1990 when pro-democracy candidates won by a landslide, a result ignored by the military junta.
"After the elections, Burma will be a military dictatorship just as much as now," said David Williams, director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at Indiana University School of Law.
The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) is the military's political juggernaut, fielding 27 incumbent ministers, top-heavy with recently retired generals.
The USDP dominated the campaign, contesting all 1,158 seats up for grabs. Its only real rival is the National Unity Party (NUP), another vehicle for the military, running for 980 seats.
At least six parties have lodged complaints with the election commission, claiming hundreds of state workers were forced to vote for the pro-military USDP in advance balloting.
Twenty-five percent of seats in all chambers are reserved for serving generals. That means an army-backed party needs to win only 26 percent of the remaining seats for the junta's allies to have a controlling stake in the country's national legislature.
There are 35 other parties contesting places in a bicameral national parliament and 14 regional assemblies. Facing restrictions such as high fees to enter the election, none has fielded enough candidates to earn any real stake in politics.
The Internet in Myanmar was barely functioning over the weekend, suffering repeated failures many believed were orchestrated by the junta to control information.
Still, some analysts say the election will create a framework for a democratic system that might yield changes in years ahead in a country bestowed with rich natural resources and located strategically between rising powers China and India.
The United States, Britain and some Asian governments have expressed concern about transparency and say the vote will lack credibility while an estimated 2,200 political prisoners, including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, remain in detention. [She is being held under house arrest by the Military dictatorship. (emphasis mine)]
The last, and only other election since 1960, was 20 years ago and won overwhelmingly by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, which has boycotted this election because hundreds of its members are in detention.
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