Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi still detained by Burma's military dictatorship.

Burma’s military dictatorship has set out laws governing a general election promised later this year, reinforcing the predictions of its opponents that it will be a hollow exercise intended to consolidate military power under a democratic façade.

The country’s state-run newspapers today published the election commission law, the first of five pieces of legislation which were formally passed on Monday. Under its terms, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the military Government calls itself, will appoint the five-person commission responsible for supervising the election.

“This demonstrate that the generals will dominate the entire process,” said Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK. “If this election were a football match the generals would be playing in both teams, as well as being the referee.”

Each of its five members must be aged over 50, and “shall be deemed by the SPDC to be an eminent person, to have integrity and experience, to be loyal to the state and its citizens and shall not be a member of a political party”.
The commission is responsible for drawing up constituencies, compiling electoral rolls, and monitoring the conduct of political parties. It has the power to postpone voting in individual constituencies in cases of “natural disaster or due to the local security situation”.

Even before the announcement of the new laws, there was widespread scepticism about the Government’s willingness to tolerate significant political change in Burma, which has been ruled by the military since 1962.

No date for the election has been announced, and it seems unlikely that the SPDC will meet the condition that major Western governments regard as the minimum for a fair election – the release from custody of the democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

In Burma’s last democratic election in 1990, Ms Suu Kyi led her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), to an overwhelming victory. But the result was never accepted by the junta, and since then she has spent 15 years in detention. Most recently, her sentence of house arrest was extended for 18 months after a bizarre incident in which an eccentric American entered her house uninvited after swimming across a lake.

The sentence expires in November this year, leading foreign diplomats in Rangoon to suspect that the junta will hold the election just before then, ensuring her exclusion. The plan for the elections places the NLD in a dilemma – whether to participate, and risk lending credibility to what is likely to be a colossal fix; or to boycott the election, and forgo any influence over it.

The party has reserved its decision until more details of the election laws are published; the documents published today will not strengthen the case of those within the party pressing for participation.

Details of four more laws will be published over the next few days, including those governing elections to the 440-person House of Representatives and the 224-person House of Nationalities, where representatives of Burma’s ethnic minorities will sit. One third of the seats in both houses will be reserved for military nominees.

On Monday, the United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki Moon, said that he had written to the head of the SPDC, Senior General Than Shwe, expressing impatience about the lack of progress towards the elections.

“All the political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, [should be] released as soon as possible, so that all of them can participate,” he said in New York. “Without the participation of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and all key political prisoners this election will not be an inclusive one.”