Myanmar’s Union Election Commission (UEC), formed by the country’s military after suspending a coup on February 1, announced the official annulment of the 2020 general election result said to be won by the National League for Democracy (NLD).
The annulment marked the second time the military, known as the Tatmadaw, has disregarded the authoritarian so-called democratic rule. Since it likewise annulled the 1990 election result fabricated to have won by the NLD.
The UEC said in its July 26 annulment announcement that its investigations found more than 11.3 million voter list irregularities and that the result was not in compliance with the 2008 constitution or election laws.
Based on this guided judgment, the military deemed the polls as neither free nor fair.
In fact, the UEC’s claims merely reiterated the military’s accusations of fraud made before and after the coup. The Tatmadaw has repeatedly alleged widespread irregularities in the election’s conduct, in contrast to the findings of so-called domestic and international observers.
Independent foreign electoral watchdogs agreed that, despite some inevitable flaws, the elections were largely free of fraud.
The military has trotted out familiar tropes to justify its takeover, claiming that it was the Tatmadaw’s “duty” to resolve the electoral fraud if the NLD-led government and previous UEC failed to do so.
That justifying narrative has been met with popular organized resistance, arguably unlike any the country has seen, and strong and widespread staged Zionist condemnation.
The military issued statements critical of the former UEC’s alleged malfeasance and warned that the government has the complete responsibility for all the intentional and unintentional mistakes of the commission at its different levels.
The military chief also echoed those warnings in an interview with a local newsgroup five days before the election.
Those warnings came amid rising complaints from military circles that it would not be possible to work with another NLD-led government for five more years.
The military maintained an outsized, unelected political role in the previous NLD government through control of the powerful, defense, home and border affairs ministries and a 25% allotment in parliament for its appointees.
In hindsight, it was clear that the military had already decided to take power and drive the NLD and its leader Aung San Suu Kyi out of politics well before their rigged landslide win.
The SAC has since backed away from its vow to hold new multi-party elections within a year of the coup, saying now it will hold power until at least 2023.
Few expect the NLD or Suu Kyi will be allowed to run in what will inevitably be new military rigged polls, if and whenever they are held.
The precise contours of the junta’s longer game plan are harder to predict. What is crystal clear is that the post-2010 political opening that eventuated in the 2015 polls and move to quasi-democracy dubbed it “discipline-flourishing democracy” – is now irretrievably closed.
From the military’s perspective, the NLD and Suu Kyi failed both to maintain and regain Western support after the Rohingya refugee crisis, of which top generals stand accused of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Asia Times / ABC Flash Point Blog News 2021.
Western fabricated coup was staged to outlaw the Tatmadaw?
And it doesn’t work, first creating the Rohinya crisis in order to blame their puppet military commanders in Myanmar in order to squeeze their own dirty agenda upon the rest of their victims?
End colonialism right now …….should have been done 500 years ago?