Majority Rules in Myanmar’s Second Democratic Election

What’s new? Myanmar’s 8 November elections will be a test of de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s popularity, and a referendum on her achievements, amid a public health and economic crisis caused by COVID-19. A change in government is unlikely, but the results may exacerbate minority grievances and armed conflict.

Why does it matter? Myanmar’s electoral system concentrates political power in the hands of the military and the Burman majority, even in areas where ethnic minorities are more numerous. The history of Burman domination of minorities is a major driver of Myanmar’s armed conflicts. Elections look set to entrench rather than ease that dynamic.

What should be done? Long-term efforts are needed to reform the electoral system to deliver fairer outcomes and amend the constitution to end the military’s political role. Recent attempts at both have failed. Meanwhile, the future government should use its executive powers to appoint ethnic party leaders to head local administrations in minority areas.

Myanmar goes to the polls on 8 November in the country’s second democratic election since the end of military rule in 2011, amid a serious wave of coronavirus infections. Aung San Suu Kyi remains extremely popular with the Burman Buddhist majority, who appear likely to propel her National League for Democracy (NLD) to a second landslide victory. But while the polls constitute an important step in consolidating electoral democracy in a country long associated with dictatorship, a first-past-the-post electoral system and a concentration of seats in the central Burman regions mean that minorities will again have limited representation. The Rohingya are almost completely excluded from participating. The results will likely amplify disaffection with electoral politics among minorities and could in turn stoke the country’s numerous armed conflicts. Pending vital but difficult electoral reform, the future government should use its executive powers to ensure that ethnic minorities have a greater say in their own governance and tackle systematic discrimination against the Rohingya, who are denied crucial rights.

The polls will gauge public opinion toward Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD party in its fifth year in office, at a time when the country is reeling from the economic impact of COVID-19 and a surge in cases since mid-August. The government and election commission decided to push ahead with elections as scheduled, in spite of the public health risks and calls by some opposition parties to postpone the balloting. Many citizens are also questioning the government’s ability to deliver electricity, jobs, a more equitable economy and – in ethnic minority areas – peace.

These issues appear unlikely to reduce the NLD’s margin of victory, however. Aung San Suu Kyi is revered by most of the Burman Buddhist majority, a status she has consolidated through her personal defence of Myanmar at the International Court of Justice, where it faced genocide charges for the violent expulsion of more than 750,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh beginning in 2016. Her very visible leadership of the country’s COVID-19 response has further burnished her image. The country also lacks an effective national opposition party, with the military-established Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), the NLD’s main adversary, having failed to rebrand itself to appeal to voters.

While there is unlikely to significant ballot fraud, the electoral process has seen many flaws, in part because of a compromised and weak election commission that has shown little sensitivity in dealing with opposition parties, civil society and the enormous challenges posed by the pandemic. Rohingya disenfranchisement, and the armed conflicts in Rakhine State and elsewhere that have led to poll cancellations, will also mar the elections’ credibility for the communities concerned as well as international observers. In Rakhine State, there is a risk that cancellations will trigger further armed conflict or political violence.

In many ways, though, the election’s aftermath will be more important than its results. A poor performance for the national opposition will surprise no one, yet the atmosphere will likely be fraught with allegations of unfair incumbent advantage, complaints that have been exacerbated by COVID-19 response measures coming in the way of campaigning. Parties representing ethnic minorities are also expressing high hopes that they can secure a larger bloc of seats, potentially becoming kingmakers. But the first-past-the-post electoral system – particularly ill-suited to Myanmar demographics – combined with a preponderance of seats in the Burman heartland, means that ethnic parties will likely not do as well as they expect.

Such an outcome will confirm many ethnic minority parties and voters in their view that they are structurally excluded from fair representation – more so because the constitution reserves an automatic 25 per cent of seats for the military. Thus, even if the election is moderately well run, with few violent incidents, its outcome may nevertheless be corrosive for peace and inclusivity. If minority people lose faith in electoral politics, some will be more likely to resort to insurgency, putting further strain on an already moribund peace process.

After independence from Britain in 1948, Myanmar experienced a decade of multiparty democratic rule. Elections were held in 1947 (for the first post-colonial government), 1951, 1956 and – following an eighteen-month period of military rule – again in 1960. The military seized back power in 1962, establishing a one-party state that lasted almost five decades. Following huge anti-government demonstrations, which the military brutally crushed, elections were held in 1990. Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD party captured the public mood, and in spite of widespread repression and the arrest of opposition party leaders, including Suu Kyi herself being confined to her house, the NLD won a landslide victory. The military government, however, in line with its pre-election warnings, refused to hand over power until a new constitution was drawn up.^[fn]For previous Crisis Group reporting on elections in Myanmar, including more detailed electoral history, see Asia Reports N°s 266, Myanmar’s Electoral Landscape, 28 April 2015; and 174, Myanmar: Towards the Elections, 20 August 2009; and Asia Briefings N°s 157, Peace and Electoral Democracy in Myanmar, 6 August 2019; 147, The Myanmar Elections: Results and Implications, 9 December 2015; 118, Myanmar’s Post-Election Landscape, 7 March 2011; and 105, The Myanmar Elections, 27 May 2010.Hide Footnote

That new constitution was not completed until 2008. The military government then organised elections in 2010, on a playing field tilted heavily in favour of the military-established USDP. The NLD and a number of allied ethnic parties boycotted the polls. The vote was peaceful, but massive irregularities gave the USDP an overwhelming majority of 79 per cent of contested seats in the national parliament.^[fn]See Crisis Group Reports, The Myanmar Elections and Myanmar’s Post-Election Landscape, op. cit. See also “Unlevel Playing Field: Burma’s Election Landscape”, Transnational Institute, October 2010.Hide Footnote  The constitution, which reserves 25 per cent of seats to appointed military officers, eventually came into force when the new parliament convened in January 2011. Together, the USDP and military held 83 per cent of the seats.

The new government that took over in March 2011 embarked on dramatic political and economic reforms and initiated a new peace process with many of the country’s ethnic armed groups.^[fn]See Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°127, Myanmar: Major Reform Underway, 22 September 2011; and Asia Reports N°s 214, Myanmar: A New Peace Initiative, 30 November 2011; and 231, Myanmar: The Politics of Economic Reform, 27 July 2012.Hide Footnote  Aung San Suu Kyi, who had been released from house arrest following the elections, took a spot in the USDP-dominated parliament following 2012 by-elections in which the NLD won virtually all the contested seats.^[fn]See Crisis Group Asia Report N°238, Myanmar: Storm Clouds on the Horizon, 12 November 2012, Section II.D.Hide Footnote

The by-elections set the stage for the NLD’s landslide victory in the November 2015 general elections. Despite major flaws, including the wholesale disenfranchisement of the Rohingya Muslim minority, a wave of Buddhist nationalist violence in 2012-2014 that pushed the political landscape in a more xenophobic direction, and democratic deficits in the elections framework (such as the 25 per cent bloc of seats reserved for the military – see Section III.B below), these were widely regarded as credible and well run compared with 2010.^[fn]See Crisis Group Asia Report N°251, The Dark Side of Transition: Violence Against Muslims in Myanmar, 1 October 2013; and Asia Briefing N°147, The Myanmar Elections: Results and Implications, 9 December 2015.Hide Footnote  The NLD won 79 per cent of the elected seats, enough to give the party an overall majority of elected and military seats in the parliament.^[fn]Crisis Group Report, The Myanmar Elections, op. cit., Appendix B.Hide Footnote

The party also did well at the regional level, securing an overall majority of elected and military seats in twelve of the fourteen subnational parliaments.^[fn]In Kachin State, the NLD fell one seat short of an outright majority, but no other party or combination of parties could match its numbers. In Kayah State, the NLD secured exactly half the seats in the local parliament. Crisis Group Report, The Myanmar Elections, op. cit., Appendix C.Hide Footnote  Although it scored poorly in Shan and Rakhine States, in both areas the president used his constitutional powers to appoint minority NLD governments, to the anger of local people and ethnic minority parties.^[fn]Ibid. See also Crisis Group Asia Report N°307, An Avoidable War: Politics and Armed Conflict in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, 9 June 2020, Section III.A.Hide Footnote

The constitution establishes a bicameral Union Assembly (Pyidaungsu Hluttaw) at the national level, made up of a 440-seat lower house (Pyithu Hluttaw) and 224-seat upper house (Amyotha Hluttaw). It also establishes fourteen subnational legislatures, one for each region or state.^[fn]Myanmar is divided into fourteen first-order administrative units: seven “regions” with a majority Burman population, and seven “states” largely populated by non-Burmans (at least historically) and named after the purported majority group in each.Hide Footnote  On election day, voters will cast a separate ballot for each legislature.^[fn]Voters from certain minority ethnic groups may also be entitled to elect a separate ethnic representative to the region/state legislature, as stipulated in section 161(b, c) of the constitution. See Crisis Group Report, Myanmar’s Electoral Landscape, op. cit., Section IV.D.Hide Footnote  With one quarter of the seats in all these legislatures reserved for serving military officers appointed by the commander-in-chief, the elections will be for the other three quarters (330 in the lower house and 168 in the upper house).

The first-past-the-post electoral system used in Myanmar since independence amplifies the success of large national parties. Thus, in 2015 the NLD won 79 per cent of the elected seats in the national parliament with 57 per cent of the popular vote, whereas the second-place USDP won only 8 per cent of the elected seats with 28 per cent of the popular vote. Thus, in 2015 the NLD won 79 per cent of the elected seats in the national parliament with 57 per cent of the popular vote, whereas the second-place USDP won only 8 per cent of the elected seats with 28 per cent of the popular vote.^[fn]Crisis Group analysis of raw data released by the Union Election Commission, available at the Myanmar Political Information website.Hide Footnote There were similar distortions in all previous elections, including in the early post-independence years; such discrepancies are common with first-past-the-post systems around the world.

The distribution of seats also privileges the Burman majority. Some 60 per cent of Union Assembly constituencies are in the Burman-majority regions where large national parties dominate.^[fn]More precisely, 291 of 498 elected seats, or 58.4 per cent, are in these regions. This number increases as a result of voting cancellations, which are all in conflict-affected states. In 2015, no ethnic minority party won a seat in the Union Assembly in the Burman-majority regions.Hide Footnote This distribution is not unfairly skewed in favour of the ethnic majority – rather the opposite, since these areas account for around three quarters of all registered voters. But combined with the first-past-the-post system, it leads to dominance for big national parties representing Burman interests in parliament. Due to recent or historical migration, many ethnic minority areas also have large Burman populations, allowing the big parties to pick up additional seats in the states even without support from minority voters.

The result is that two big parties – the NLD and USDP – vie for national dominance by focusing their electoral efforts on Burman voters, while each of a plethora of ethnic minority parties seeks to represent its communal interest.^[fn]Fifty-five of the 94 registered political parties are ethnic minority parties. See “Myanmar: Ethnic Politics and the 2020 General Election”, Transnational Institute, September 2020, p. 16.Hide Footnote  Under the current system, most of the latter parties will win few votes and no seats.^[fn]In 2015, only ten of the 59 ethnic minority parties won a seat in the Union Assembly; five of those won only a single seat each. Crisis Group analysis of 2015 election results.Hide Footnote  A few of the larger ethnic parties could be moderately successful, particularly those that represent geographically concentrated populations, which can benefit from the first-past-the-post system. Some have also sought to bolster their prospects through a series of mergers that allow them to present a more united and credible option for voters. For example, three ethnic Karen parties have merged into a single entity, as have three Chin parties, three Kachin parties and two Mon parties.^[fn]For a full list, see “Myanmar: Ethnic Politics and the 2020 General Election”, op. cit., p. 9.

The challenge these parties face is demographic. Many of the constituencies they are contesting are multi-ethnic, and vote splitting among different ethnic communities in a given area can tilt the balance in favour of a national party.^[fn]For discussion of the often competitive, zero-sum nature of inter-ethnic relations, see Crisis Group Asia Report N°312, Identity Crisis: Ethnicity and Conflict in Myanmar, 28 August 2020.Hide Footnote  The expectation of many ethnic parties that they will be able to play a kingmaker role in the next parliament may therefore not be realistic; given its strength and the USDP’s weakness, the NLD will likely be in a position to form a government on its own, without the need to garner support from smaller ethnic parties.^[fn]The kingmaker scenario has been widely mooted. Crisis Group interviews, political party leaders and electoral support organisations, Yangon, July-October 2020. See also “Will Myanmar’s next govt be an ethnic-NLD coalition?”, The Irrawaddy, 27 June 2020; “A look ahead to Myanmar GE 2020: ethnic parties and storms of discontent”, Southeast Asia Globe, 20 July 2020; “No more ethnic blank check for NLD: coalition-building in the air?”, Shan Herald Agency for News, 18 September 2020.Hide Footnote  Such a scenario would enormously disappoint and frustrate the ethnic parties (see Section IV below).

Myanmar’s military-drafted constitution enshrines a political role for the armed forces. One quarter of the seats in national and subnational legislatures are reserved for military officers appointed by the commander-in-chief, along with one of the two vice president positions and control of the defence, border affairs and home affairs ministries.^[fn]More precisely, the constitution provides that the military bloc in parliament choose one of the three vice presidential candidates. These candidates compete in a single-round presidential vote in parliament, with the winner becoming president, and the other two becoming first and second vice presidents, respectively. It is therefore possible, but in practice unlikely, that the military candidate could become the president. A serving officer can run for president or vice president but must resign from the military upon taking office. See 2008 Constitution, sections 60, 62-64.Hide Footnote

Whichever political party wins the elections will thus be required to share power with the military – a largely autonomous and Burman-dominated institution whose commander-in-chief does not answer to the civilian president or the courts.^[fn]Crisis Group Report, Towards the Elections, op. cit., Section III.Hide Footnote  This feature of Myanmar’s system is both undemocratic in principle and problematic in practice, as it creates a dyadic government whose frequent dysfunction stymies progress on key issues such as the peace process, accountability for military crimes or scrutiny of military budgets.^[fn]See Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°143, Myanmar’s Military: Back to the Barracks?, 22 April 2014.Hide Footnote

The military justifies its constitutional prerogatives as necessary for national stability – a vision based on its interpretation of the 1950s, the country’s last democratic era, which was characterised by chaos resulting from what the military regards as infighting among self-serving civilian politicians.^[fn]See Mary P. Callahan, Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma (Ithaca, 2003).Hide Footnote  This vision ensured that the military did not use its powers to be maximally disruptive of the civilian government in the last five years, even though its relations with the NLD are often strained.^[fn]Crisis Group interview, Myanmar political analyst, Yangon, June 2020. These strained relations have come about in part due to the poor chemistry between Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. Crisis Group interviews, well-informed Myanmar sources, Yangon, October 2020. They have also arisen over substantive issues such as the push for constitutional change (see below) and the establishment of the state counsellor position for Aung San Suu Kyi, to circumvent the constitutional bar on her assuming the presidency. See Crisis Group Asia Report N°282, Myanmar’s New Government: Finding Its Feet?, 29 July 2016, Section III.B.Hide Footnote  For example, while the military has the numbers in parliament to initiate (but not determine the outcome of) impeachment proceedings against senior executive officials, it has very rarely launched or supported such moves.^[fn]The only two instances in the current government’s term are the impeachments of the Kayah State chief minister and the Rakhine State minister for municipal affairs, which both had support from elected lawmakers (in the Kayah case, including NLD representatives). See “NLD chief minister of Myanmar’s Kayah State impeached”, The Irrawaddy, 1 September 2020; “Impeached Rakhine minister slams secretive investigation”, Frontier Myanmar, 3 January 2018.Hide Footnote

One area in which the military has made full use of its political power is constitutional reform – a key NLD pledge ahead of the 2015 elections, repeated in its 2020 manifesto.^[fn]NLD Election Manifesto 2020 (Burmese), on file with Crisis Group. See also “Myanmar’s ruling party vows to reform military in election manifesto”, The Irrawaddy, 2 September 2020.Hide Footnote  The military has a veto on charter amendments, which it used to reject virtually all reform proposals introduced by the NLD in parliament earlier in 2020.^[fn]“Military rejects NLD bid to strip generals of their constitutional veto power”, Myanmar Now, 13 March 2020.Hide Footnote  Any diminution of the military’s role will therefore come on its own terms and timeframe. In the meantime, there is a fundamental limit to the extent of change that any election can bring, since the one certainty for any vote is that elected representatives will be sharing executive, legislative and judicial power with the military.

Myanmar’s state institutions and election system have failed the Rohingya. Although they were allowed to vote in elections and by-elections from the country’s independence up to 2012, the vast majority were disenfranchised in 2015, and will be again in 2020. In February 2015, following several years of intense anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya hate speech and violence, then-President Thein Sein cancelled Temporary Registration Certificates (or “white cards”) – the only kind of identification document that most Rohingya held.^[fn]Temporary Registration Certificates (or “white cards”) were given to Rohingya in the 1980s when they came to renew their identification cards, instead of the citizenship cards most should have been issued. Crisis Group Report, The Dark Side of Transition, op. cit.; and Elliot Brennan, “Citizenship, ethnicity and electioneering in Myanmar”, Lowy Interpreter, 8 April 2015.Hide Footnote  In practice, this move denied most Rohingya the right to vote. A Constitutional Tribunal decision then specified that only citizens had the right to vote, thereby disqualifying most Rohingya, who are denied citizenship by discriminatory application of the law.^[fn]“Tribunal rules white card voting rights unconstitutional”, Myanmar Times, 12 May 2015.Hide Footnote  The Myanmar military has since violently expelled more than 750,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh, but an estimated 600,000 remain in Rakhine State.

There are now three Rohingya political parties registered with the election commission, although they are not allowed to include the word “Rohingya” in their party names. Candidates are also required to identify as “Bengali”, a pejorative term implying recent immigration from Bangladesh, when most Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations.^[fn]These parties are the National Democratic Party for Development; the National Development and Peace Party; and the Democracy and Human Rights Party. A voter education app developed by the election commission with the support of international donors and implementers created a controversy when a Myanmar human rights organisation pointed out the dangers of including candidates’ race and religion data, particularly the racist identification of Rohingya candidates. See “Ethnic identifiers in Myanmar election app criticized”, Associated Press, 1 October 2020.Hide Footnote  These parties are a legacy of the time when the Rohingya were able to vote. They have kept up their official registration despite the disenfranchisement of most of their community, as an important reminder of their past status and as a way to maintain a platform for Rohingya politicians.^[fn]Crisis Group interviews, Rohingya political leaders, Yangon, 2015-2020.Hide Footnote