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Some form of election will almost certainly be held in Myanmar in December or early next year, so it is important to be reminded of how polls have been handled in the past. Above all, people inside and outside the country should know that the military has a history of disregarding election results that do not suit it. In other instances there was no actual, credible voting at all, such as the referendums in 1973 and 2008 and elections under the pre-1988 one-party rule.

The first elections after World War II were held in April 1947 to a Constituent Assembly, not a proper parliament. At stake were 255 seats—210 for Burma proper, of which 24 were reserved for the Karens and four for the Anglo-Burmese, and the remaining 45 for the Frontier Areas. To ensure a secure voting environment, British, Indian, and Burmese troops launched “Operation Flush” against ThakinSoe’s Red Flag Communist insurgents, who were intimidating people and threatened to destroy polling booths. According to historian Hugh Tinker, the People’s Volunteer Organization, a paramilitary force led by Aung San, then “marched the people to the polling booths.”

Even so, elections could not be held in many parts of the country and, consequently, turnout was only 49.8 percent. The outcome was 173 seats for the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), the predominant political party at the time also led by Aung San—until he was assassinated along with almost the entire pre-independence government on July 19 that year. The then still aboveground Communist Party of Burma (CPB) did not participate under that banner, but seven junior members were elected as independents. The Karen National Union (KNU) also boycotted the election, but 19 members of the Karen Youth Organization won seats. The Assembly met on June 9 and began overseeing the drafting of a constitution, which was approved and came into effect at independence on Jan. 4, 1948. 

Actual parliamentary elections were held twice in the 1950s. The first had to be held over several months, from June 1951 to April 1952, because political and ethnic wars were raging in the countryside. The CPB had gone underground in March 1947 and resorted to armed struggle, while the Karen and other ethnic minorities were fighting for self-determination.

Turnout was extremely low. Out of an eligible 8 million voters, only about 1.5 million, or less then 20 percent, participated. The Pyithu Hluttaw or Chamber of Deputies should have had 250 seats, but 11 were listed as vacant. Of the remaining 239 seats, the AFPFL secured 147, while 52 went to allied parties and organizations. The People’s Democratic Front (PDF), an alliance of leftist groups, won 19 seats, the Independent Arakanese Parliamentary Group (IAPG) got six, and 15 were won by candidates representing various smaller parties.

The AFPFL also dominated the next election on April 27, 1956. Turnout was higher this time at 48 percent, and elections were held in 240 constituencies, with 10 left to be decided when the security situation had improved. The AFPFL won 147 seats, the leftist National United Front (NUF) 48, the United Hill People’s Congress (UHPC) 14, the Arakanese National Unity Organization (ANUO) five. The rest went to smaller parties, among them some representing the Shan and the Kachins. Still, this marked a notable decline for the AFPFL since it failed to gather as many allied parties and organizations as it did in 1951-52

By then, insurgencies were mostly contained, but the political turmoil caused Prime Minister U Nu to resign in June and transfer power to his deputy Ba Swe. In February 1957, U Nu resumed office as prime minister—but then came a serious split in the AFPFL. Ba Swe, together with his colleague, Deputy Prime Minister Kyaw Nyein, broke away under the name “the Stable AFPFL” while U Nu’s faction became known as “the Clean AFPFL.”

By October 1958, the situation had become unsustainable, prompting General Ne Win to step in and establish a caretaker government. It pledged to rule only until fresh elections could be held—and the military actually kept its promise. Elections took place on Feb. 6, 1960, and U Nu’s “Clean AFPFL”, now renamed the Union (Pyidaungsu) Party, won by a landslide, securing an absolute majority with 158 of the 250 seats. “The Stable AFPFL” got only 41 seats, and the NUF’s share was reduced to a mere three. Ethnic and smaller parties secured the rest. Turnout was 60 percent, the highest since independence.

Then came the March 2, 1962 coup d’etat. Ne Win and the military seized power, abolished the 1947 Constitution, and arrested all leading politicians. A centralized, military dictatorship replaced Burma’s fragile, federal democracy. And this time the military was not going to hand back power to any civilian politicians. A junta called the Revolutionary Council reigned until a new constitution was adopted in 1974, establishing a one-party state with only the military-led Burma Socialist Program Party (BSPP) allowed to field candidates. Elections became a mere formality.

Before the new constitution was promulgated, a referendum was held in December 1973. The two boxes for yes and no votes were hidden behind a screen, but placed in different corners of the polling booth— and there was a 15-20 cm wide gap between the ground and the screen, so officials could easily see how people voted. Even so, some voters managed to cast their ballots in the no-box, but the authorities announced that 90.19 per cent had approved the new constitution.

Elections were held in January and February 1974, with all 451 seats in the new-style Pyithu Hluttaw naturally won by the BSPP amid an officially declared 94.61 percent turnout. The number of members fluctuated somewhat, so that the BSPP won 464 seats in 1978, 475 in 1981 and 489 in 1985. Elections were even supposed to have taken place in parts of the country which at that time were not controlled by the BSPP government but held by various political and ethnic insurgents.

BSPP rule with army officers donning civilian clothes ended after the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, which was brutally crushed and led to the formation of a new junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). But, to the surprise of many, the one-party system was abolished, and then junta chief General Saw Maung promised to hold what he termed “free and fair elections.”

The BSPP was transformed into a new pro-military entity, the National Unity Party (NUP); the generals probably overestimated its importance and popularity. I remember Ye Htut, a SLORC information officer, in January 1989 telling me, “You foreigners believe that the NLD has widespread popular support. They may have some followers in urban areas, but in the countryside, people support us.” The NLD, the National League for Democracy, had been formed after the 1988 uprising and soon became the main force for a restoration of the democracy that Burma had enjoyed prior to the 1962 coup.

Elections were held on May 27, 1990 with turnout at 73 percent, resulting in a landslide victory for the NLD. It captured 392 of the 485 seats in the Pyithu Hluttaw, in urban as well as rural areas. The Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) came second with 23 seats, the Mon Democratic Front (MDF) won five, and miscellaneous parties and independents 55.

The military-backed NUP ended up with a mere 10 seats. Under a first-past-the-post system, it may be argued that it won a little over 20 percent of the popular vote, but either way it was routed—and the military had to create an entirely new political platform. In 1993, this became the Union Solidarity and Development Association, renamed in 2010 the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) that we know today.

Since the “wrong” party had won the 1990 elections, the rules had to change. On July 27, two months after the election, SLORC issued Announcement 1/90 declaring that only the junta “has the right to legislative power”—and that “the representatives elected by the people” would merely be “responsible for drafting a new constitution for a future democratic state.” Within days of the announcement, Burma’s military intelligence service—which is more of a secret police force—launched a massive campaign against elected NLD MPs. By the end of the year, 65 had been arrested, nearly a dozen had fled to neighboring Thailand and India, and many resigned voluntarily.

Thus the elected Pyithu Hluttaw was never convened. Instead, about 100 of the 485 MPs-elect were to sit in a “National Convention” together with 600 other, non-elected representatives who had been handpicked by the military to draft the new constitution. It was not until 18 years later, in April 2008, that that task was eventually completed and a referendum held. As expected, it turned out to be blatantly fraudulent. The ruling junta, now renamed the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), announced that the constitution had been approved by 92.4 per cent of voters, claiming a 99 per cent turnout in the regions where voting was said to have taken place. In some constituencies, it was reported that more than 100 percent of voters had approved—which had to be hastily corrected to give the new Constitution at least a semblance of credibility.

A general election followed in November 2010, which, again, every serious observer agrees was rigged. The alleged turnout was 77 percent and the USDP won a landslide victory, capturing a solid majority in both the upper and lower houses of the new parliament. In addition, a quarter of all seats in both chambers were reserved for the military. The USDP thus secured 259 of 330 contested seats in the House of Representatives (lower house) and 168 of the 224 seats in the House of Nationalities (upper hose). The military appointed 110 members in the lower house and 46 in the upper. The NUP got 12 seats in the lower house and five in the upper, the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party (SNDP) 18 in the lower house and three in the upper, and the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) nine in the lower and seven in the upper.

A new “civilian” government was formed consisting mainly of military officers who, like in the 1970s, had replaced their uniforms with civilian clothes. The new president, Thein Sein, was a former general who had previously served as military-appointed prime minister from 2007 to 2010 and as first secretary of the SPDC. Thein Sein’s government did, however, order the release of political prisoners and allowed parties, including the NLD, to operate openly. Press censorship was lifted and new civil society organizations were formed.

The Thein Sein government also initiated a “peace process” whereby the country’s ethnic armed organizations were invited to talks with the new government and the military. All this led to the erronous conclusion that Thein Sein was some kind of “Burmese Gorbachev” and that the country was undergoing “a transition to democracy.”

That impression was strengthened when the NLD participated in the next, November 2015 elections and won a landslide victory by capturing 258 of 330 contested seats in the lower house and 138 of 168 contested seats in the upper. The USDP won only 26 and 11 seats respectively. Turnout for the lower house was 69.72 percent and 69.82 percent for the upper house. The SNLD won 15 seats in the lower house and two in the upper, while 24 seats went to other political parties and independents. The NLD was allowed to form a government with Aung San Suu Kyi as “state counselor”; she could not become president because her two sons were not Burmese citizens.

What Myanmar was experiencing at this time could best be described as “glasnost without perestroika” (glasnost was Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s term for openness, and perestroika meant reestructuring of the old system). There was openness, and freedoms were allowed, but the 2008 Constitution had ensured that the basic power structure with the military at its apex remained intact. The military not only controlled a quarter of all seats in the upper and lower houses but also reserved the right to appoint the three most important ministers—defense, home affairs (which includes the police and internal security), and border affairs, giving the men in green ultimate control over border trade and dealings with armed groups in the frontier areas. And more than three quarters of all MPs would have to approve of any vital constitutional change, and, if that unlikely scenario were to happen, there would be a referendum.

The reason for the generals’ decision to allow more openness was obvious. The country had become too dependent on China during the years the Western world had imposed sanctions and boycotts against SLORC and its successor, the SPDC. In order to balance that dependency and improve relations with the rest of the world, certain concessions had to be made. And it worked: Myanmar turned almost overnight from an international pariah into the darling of the West.

But a second NLD victory in the 2020 election was more than the military could accept, and the generals began talking about “voter fraud” even as international and domestic poll watchers insisted that, while there had been some irregularities, it was largely free and fair. The NLD was about to form a second government when the military stepped in on Feb. 1, 2021 and arrested the entire cabinet, including President U Win Myint and State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi.

What has happened since then is well documented. Myanmar has entered a new era of its decades-long civil war. Armed ethnic Bamar groups, as well as ethnic minority rebels, are fighting military regime, and a new junta, the State Administration Council (SAC), unleashed an almost unprecedented reign of terror across the country to prove its point.

Only a complete fool can believe that the junta, which has now rebranded itself the State Security and Peace Commission, would hold free and fair elections or, even if they were free and fair, honor the result. The NLD has been disbanded and no party that could be seen as a serious contender for power has announced that it will participate. This time, the military has made sure the USDP is the only game in town.

But will the result be accepted by the international community? Myanmar’s immediate neighbors China, India, and Bangladesh certainly will accept it. China is eager to keep its dominant position in Myanmar, and India wants to counter that by moving closer to the authorities in Naypyitaw. For the Bangladeshis it is realpolitik: they have to find a way to repatriate more than 1 million Muslim Rohingyas who are languishing in camps on their side of the border, and that can only be done through negotiations with Naypyitaw.

Judging from past policies of “engagement” with the Myanmar military, Japan, the ASEAN countries, and perhaps even Australia may argue that it is “a step in the right direction.” Countries like Norway and Switzerland may even believe that they can step in and “mediate.” But Burma’s generals have never listened to such outsiders, and they have always marched to a single drum: remain in power at any cost. That is the sad reality Myanmar’s pro-democracy groups are up against. Real change would have to come from within the ruling military, and that seems for the foreseeable future highly unlikely.

Bertil Lintner is a Swedish journalist, author and strategic consultant who has been writing about Asia for nearly four decades.

This article was originally published on The Irrawaddy.
Views in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect CGS policy.