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USDP plans dirty tricks campaign for Burma by-election

Irrawaddy - February 28, 2012

Larry Jagan – Campaigning for Burma's by-elections gets into full swing later this week. Although the country's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi – who is contesting a Lower House seat representing her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), in Rangoon's Kawhmu constituency – has already made several forays into the countryside, the campaign is set to truly get underway on March 1.

But already there are strong signs that this will be far from a free and fair election. The ruling Union Solidarity and Development (USDP) will launch its major electoral broadside later this week – all part of its carefully crafted election strategy. The main USDP leaders – most of whom are not ministers in the current government, but are close to the old junta boss Than Shwe – plan to wage war against the NLD.

Nothing is going to be left to chance, according to a confidential election strategy paper seen by this author. Bribery, vote-buying, intimidation and fraud are all part of the scheme to win the Parliamentary seats up for grabs at the April polls.

The USDP's detailed strategy for the forthcoming by-elections includes innocuous plans to provide their candidates with the best campaign material – vinyl posters, flyers and attractive billboards to increase the visibility of candidates, free promotional material including T-shirts and hats, and assistance provided for voters to travel to the polling stations.

But more significantly the strategy also involve plans for the character assassination of NLD candidates, bribery and vote-fixing.

The hardline leadership of the USDP will stop at nothing to the win the Parliamentary seats at stake in the by-elections, according to the USDP campaign strategy paper.

The USDP leaders understand that their future – though not necessarily that of the government – is intimately tied up with the current Parliamentary by-elections. They cannot afford to lose, and they have set their sights on winning all 48 seats that are being contested – by hook or by crook. A rebuff at these polls will signal the end of the party as it is currently organized, and the hardline leaders are likely to be cast aside.

Aung Thaung, the former Minister for Industry-1, and close confidante of former Snr-Gen Than Shwe, is a renowned hardliner opposed to President Thein Sein's reform agenda. And it is he who is in charge of the campaign – as he was in 2010, then at Than Shwe's behest.

These by-elections are a test of strength for the USDP and the NLD, he told party organizers in the strategy paper that was recently circulated to all party offices throughout the country. Do not take these elections for granted, it warned, "remember 1990 when voters blindly flocked to the NLD to spite the old Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP)."

This cannot be allowed to be repeated – the country's continued security, peace and development depends on it, according to Aung Thaung. Campaigning cannot be done only verbally, but must be combined with practical benefits – for the voters. The main issue is the "stomach," the USDP strategy stresses. This involves building and repairing roads, providing schools and medical centres, and promising jobs. Incentives to vote for the USDP would be provided, according to the document.

So called "election-winning committees" have been formed in all regions, states, divisions, townships, wards and village tracts. Special improvement committees have been formed to carry out development tasks – each with seed money of five million kyat (US $6,250) per township. Increased funds will be provided if necessary, the organizers of the campaign plans promised.

And there is no shortage of coffers, according to Rangoon's Western diplomats who have been monitoring the preparations for the election. Hundreds of former government properties have been sold off in the past few months to raise the necessary financial resources to fight the by-elections.

Already the campaign strategy is being carried out. All along the main road in Aung San Suu Kyi's constituency there are big colorful billboards proclaiming to voters that the roads are being repaired by the USDP. In many places throughout the country USDP is taking credit for infrastructure projects, medical centres and schools, built by the government. The NLD says it is concerned with this obvious electoral manipulation.

At a recent press conference in Rangoon, the party spokesman Nyan Win complained that the USDP candidates had promised voters upgraded infrastructure and electricity supply – but the NLD questioned the source of their funding to meet these promises. "Giving such promises is tantamount to buying votes and applying undue influence," Nyan Win told reporters.

Another central strategy of the USDP is collaboration with pro-government charities and civil society – involving maternal and children's health, women's affairs, the Red Cross and the fire brigade, to ensure the party's victory.

Part of the dirtier campaign involves studying the NLD candidates' "bio data, exposing their weaknesses and cleverly informing the voters," according to the election strategy document. While this is written in a rather opaque style, its intention is clear – blacken the character of the NLD candidates and create a general atmosphere of fear.

While campaigning in the Dawei industrial zone area in southern Burma last month, the former fisheries minister and USDP central executive member Maung Maung Thein – who has substantial business interests in the region, warned residents last month that if they did not vote for the USDP they would lose their jobs.

But the strategy paper clearly spells that in the last resort the election result cannot be left to chance. If all else fails then the plan is to manipulate the actual vote, according to the confidential instruction to the USDP regional and provisional bosses.

"Pressure must be applied on the polling stations where the USDP candidates were defeated in the 2010 poll," it says. "Polling officers and polling booth attendants must be befriended and won over. Assistance must be given to them to meet their economic and social needs." While indirect in its instructions, the intention to rig the polls as far as possible is evidently clear.

This is already being prepared. While in the Dawei area, Maung Maung Thein instructed the local officials to make sure they manipulate the vote in the same way that the November polls were rigged, senior military sources told this correspondent. Other USDP leaders Aung Thaung and Htay Oo are doing the same.

In Mandalay and the Irrawaddy, meetings of village and quarter administrative chiefs have been told they would lose their jobs if the USDP candidates did not win.

But this election battle has much broader implications; for while the USDP and the NLD shape up for a major showdown in these elections, senior government leaders are waiting in the wings for the outcome. President Thein Sein and the Lower House speaker Shwe Mann are counting on a significant NLD victory to clear the way for future reform and political control.

For it is the next national elections in 2015 that is now what is really at stake – though the reform agenda would be strengthened by a strong political lobby led Aung San Suu Kyi in Parliament.

Thein Sein has already publicly announced he will not be standing for re-election as president next time round. Clearly Shwe Mann has his eyes on that crown. He understands that to fight the next elections he needs a much reformed and restructured party. The hardliners electoral failure will give him the pretext to clean house.

Last month at the USDP special meeting, he warned his audience that there was is no place in the party for members who "bully the people, are arrogant, behaving in an unpleasant way, show little thought for other people, breaching party discipline, and hinder and disturb the inner party democratization."

He threatened them with disciplinary action and expulsion – a clear message of intent, and an indication that he hopes to use the elections as a pretext to clean house and prepare the party for the 2015 polls, in which he certainly intends to stand for president.

But he may not have it all his own way – as current Vice President Thin Aung Myint Oo has thrown his hat into the ring, according to senior government sources. An Asian diplomat who met him recently described him as "keenly intelligent and tremendously ambitious," and said that he clearly wants to be president next time round.

The irony is that the reformers' strategy of trying to co-opt Aung San Suu Kyi may backfire on the heir-apparent. If Suu Kyi is elected to Parliament at the upcoming by-elections, she will quickly emerge as a challenger to Shwe Mann and the USDP's current dominance at the 2015 polls. "I know, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Shwe Mann reportedly said.

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