Burma Pledges to Punish Election Fraudsters

APRIL 2, 2012— Burma’s Elections Commission has vowed to punish those who committed electoral fraud in weekend by-elections amid complaints of voter irregularities by both the government-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).

Director General of the Union Election Commission Win Ko told RFA’s Burmese service in an interview that anyone found guilty of the offense would face a punishment of a year in prison, provided proper evidence was presented against the alleged offender.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD swept the polls, winning 40 of the 44 seats it contested, but the Nobel laureate cautioned against overlooking the polling irregularities which she said would be raised with the commission.

“We do not think that such practices should be encouraged in any way,” she said.

Responding to allegations by the NLD, Win Ko said action would be taken against violators of election rules based on concrete evidence.

On a claim by an NLD candidate that wax had been applied over the NLD tick-box on ballot papers to prevent voters from choosing the party, Win Ko said, “If the evidence is valid, whoever breaks the election law is subject to one year in prison."

“However, in my opinion, it would not have been easy for someone to wax over 100,000 voting cards,” he said.

“We need evidence of who broke the law and when, and so far we haven't received anything yet.”

He did not provide details of the law under which offenders could be charged.

Win Ko also addressed allegations of irregular voter lists at polling stations during the Sunday elections. NLD candidates complained that thousands of voters found their names missing from the electoral rolls and that, in one instance, an entire village had been omitted from the registry.

“According to the law, the township and village [election] commissions are responsible for that. They also have to rely on a list … compiled by … officials and the local authorities,” he said.

“We do not have the manpower to do the groundwork, so we have to rely on that data to compile a voting list.”

But Win Ko said that the media had full access to the polls, “so I don’t need to elaborate on [whether they were] free and fair.”

Local process

He said that as a central organ, the Elections Commission seeks to break larger cases of alleged voting irregularities down to the local level.

“On the ground, the Commission has been trying to resolve the problems on a district and village level before they become criminal cases, by negotiating with the parties,” he said.

“If these cases reach a criminal level, we urge the parties to report them to the police and Information Ministry. We, as an election commission, can't prosecute that kind of case, but if it proves to be a valid violation, we can change the results of the election.”

When asked how experiences from Burma’s 2010 general elections and Sunday’s by-elections would dictate the Commission’s conduct in the 2015 general elections, Win Ko said information was still being collected from the local level on how to improve the process.

But he believed the Commission would be better prepared to handle the 2015 elections, based on feedback gathered by political parties at the local levels.

Incorrect lists

Meanwhile, a Burmese election watchdog said Monday that 95 percent of the country’s polling stations had incorrect voter lists, leading to confusion in the election process.

But the Yangon [Rangoon] School of Political Science, a think tank of young intellectuals, said that despite the high percentage of erroneous lists, the voting process was “more free than before,” referring to 2010 general elections that saw a nominally civilian government take power from the country’s former military junta.

The election monitoring group, which had also monitored the 2010 elections, based its findings on a survey of 101 voting stations in 21 townships with a team of 400 observers.

“We share information on how to observe the elections with as many members of various townships as we can possibly reach. We just use our own budget, and we rely mostly on handbooks issued by international organizations,” group leader Myat Thu told RFA’s Burmese service.

“We did not focus on the election results—only how the voting process was managed and whether or not it was free and fair,” he said.

Myat Thu said his organization was in constant contact with its network on the ground via cell phone to determine voter arrivals at polling stations and whether or not they faced intimidation, coaching, or were assisted in filling out their ballots.

“Based on the answers from each polling station, we took a percentage and issued our finding … that [the voting process] was more free than before, although there were some instances of unfairness and many people didn’t have a chance to vote,” he said.

“But despite these problems, they didn't have an effect on the NLD's victory.”

International election observers from the U.S., EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) all monitored the elections on Sunday.

The head of the EU's observer team called the voting process "convincing enough," though she would not label the elections entirely credible.

Reported by Kyaw Kyaw Aung and Tin Aung Khine for RFA’s Burmese service. Translated by Khin May Zaw. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

View this story online at: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/burma/pledge-04022012180313.html

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