Vol. 74/No. 48      December 20, 2010

Members of parliament enjoy free speech “unless their speeches endanger national security, the unity of the country or violate the constitution,” reported the Washington Post. A two-year jail sentence awaits anyone who organizes a protest on parliament grounds.

The population of Myanmar (formerly Burma) is more than 50 million. At least one-third of Myanmar’s population lives below the poverty line, according to UN figures. The last mass protests against military rule occurred in 2007, when working people took to the streets against rises in fuel prices.

The November 7 elections were openly designed to reinforce the junta’s rule by covering it with a parliamentary facade. Military appointees will fill one-quarter of the seats in each of the three newly “elected” legislative bodies.

Following the election, the junta released prominent opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi after seven years of house arrest. Suu Kyi heads the National League for Democracy (NLD), which comfortably won the last elections held in 1990. The generals blocked that government from meeting.

According to official results, the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) won nearly 80 percent of the seats up for vote. The party is headed by Prime Minister Thein Sein and other officers who only recently “swapped military fatigues for civilian clothes,” as Reuters put it.

USDP leaders are associated with moves to privatize state economic holdings. This policy differentiates them from the National Unity Party (NUP), which with 63 seats came in a distant second. The NUP was identified with a heavily centralized economy that for decades provided entry to the capitalist class for top military officers.

Opposition forces split over whether to participate in the elections. Suu Kyi’s NLD called for a boycott. Defecting NLD leaders participated in the vote under the banner of the National Democratic Force, winning 16 seats. In total, parties not directly tied to the military gained 9 percent of the total seats. Several were based on non-Burman nationalities, who make up between a quarter and a half of the population.

In interviews and speeches since her release, Suu Kyi, who has received backing from Washington and the other imperialist powers, has called for freeing the other 2,200 political prisoners. She has also said she supports talks with the regime for “national reconciliation” and is open to lifting economic sanctions.

While millions live close to starvation, the junta has opened up the economy to foreign investments in the country’s natural resources. Gas and oil reserves, along with timber and precious stones, have drawn investment from companies in Thailand, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and India. Trade sanctions against Myanmar prevent most U.S. and European corporations from joining in the plunder, but oil companies are granted exceptions.

China’s economic weight and growing influence in Southeast Asia, including growing investments in Myanmar and close military and political ties to the regime, are prompting concerns in Washington. Writing in Asia Times online in March of this year, Stanley Weiss of Business Executives for National Security said, “The Obama administration has sought to begin a new conversation with Myanmar, conducting the highest-level talks with the generals in more than a decade.”  
 
 
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