Aung San Suu Kyi casts vote in

Myanmar's first free election for 25 years

Opposition leader and one-time political prisoner battles media scrum to
reach the polling station in capital Yangon

Aun
g San Suu Kyi, the Myanmar opposition politician, casts her vote during the first free and fair election for
decades on Sunday. Photograph: Lam Yik Fei/Getty Images

Oliver Holmes in Yangon-Sunday 8 November 2015

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Myanmar opposition leader, and millions of Burmese
have cast their votes in what is being touted as the countrys first free
election in 25 years.
The Nobel peace prize-winners car inched through battling news
photographers outside a school building in Yangon, the city formerly named
Rangoon, and her bodyguards parted the crowds to allow her to vote.
Polls opened at 4am across the country, which suffered decades of army-led
dictatorship followed by a stumbling reform process. Booths have been
erected in schools and monasteries and long queues of people hoping to

avoid the heat arrived early and patiently waited, many wearing traditional
longyi sarongs and some holding children.
Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD) party won a 1990
election by a landslide but the results were nullified by the army generals.
Aye Aye Tun, a 30-year-old bank clerk, wants the opposition leader now 70
to win in what foreign governments believe will be the countrys most
transparent poll in a generation.

Crowds take pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi as she arrives at a polling station in Yangon on Sunday. Photograph:
Amanda Mustard/AP

Everything will change, especially for the poor, she told the Guardian
outside the school, a line of voters behind her. Her little finger was dipped
in purple indelible ink, used to make sure the countrys 30 million voters are
unable to vote twice.
Even if Aung San Suu Kyi wins the popular vote, she is barred from the
presidency by the army-drafted constitution and a quarter of the seats in
parliament are reserved for the military, making a legislative majority hard
to grasp.
The current semi-civilian government has pushed through some change
over the past four years, opening up the once-isolated economy, releasing

political prisoners and allowing independent newspapers to be published.

Importantly, and unlike the widely dismissed 2010 elections, international
election observers had fanned out across the country on Sunday. Mary
Robinson, former president of Ireland, spoke at a small gathering in Yangon
where she was working with the Carter Centers election observation
mission.
Weve been welcomed into polling stations and every question weve
asked has been well answered, she said by a polling station at a
monastery, where voters had removed their shoes as a sign of respect.

People line up to vote in a mixed Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu neighbourhood in Mandalay on Sunday.
Photograph: Olivia Harris/Reuters

But she warned: We have to see this election within a framework that is
not openly democratic in the full sense.
The run-up to the polls was marred by election inconsistencies, notably the
disenfranchisement of the nations Muslim Rohingya, a persecuted and
stateless minority.
In downtown Yangon, where trees grow from the walls of crumbling British
buildings, Yea Htun, an official from Myanmars election commission, told

the Guardian that 400 of the 700 people registered in the area had turned
up early to vote. Everyone has jobs to get to, but the process has gone
well.
Posters stuck to the sides of buildings along the former colonial capital
showed cartoons of how to cast a vote. One has examples of the correct
way to fill out ballots, but instead of real candidates it showed drawings of
fruit labelled Mrs Watermelon, Mr Banana and Mr Apple.
In a nearby alleyway, a queue of voters remained in line at about 11am. A
22-year-old and her 77-year-old grandmother said they were voting for the
first time in their lives. Expect to see change, the granddaughter said,
clutching her smart phone to her chest.
At the NLD headquarters in Yangon, the red flag with a golden peacock
hung from the building. The party will hold a mass gathering as the count
trickles in on Sunday. Official results are not expected until early next week.
With foreign investment at stake, the government will want to assure world
powers that it is sincere. Last week, US senior national security aide Ben
Rhodes said that fair elections would lead to greater sanction relief.

Aung San Suu Kyi arrives at the polling station in Yangon. Photograph: Lam Yik Fei/Getty Images

Obviously it will impact how we look at sanctions, Rhodes said. President

Barack Obama visited Myanmar in 2014, a strong sign to international
business that the reforms were acceptable to Washington, which only 10
years ago called the regime an outpost of tyranny.
President Thein Sein said on Friday the government and the military will
respect and accept the results.
Jasmin Lorch, from the GIGA Institute of Asian Studies in Hamburg, said: If
the military gets the feeling that its vested interests are threatened, it can
always act as a veto player and block further reforms.
The New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch said the
elections were fundamentally flawed, citing a lack of an independent
election commission with its leader, chairman U Tin Aye, both a former
army general and former member of the ruling party.
Long lines of voters on 8 November wont make these fundamentally
flawed elections free and fair, said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human
Rights Watch. The body said ruling party dominance of state media and
laws preventing many Muslims in Myanmar from voting have also
discredited the poll.
Several hundred thousand Muslims in the country, particularly in north-west
Rakhine state, have been disenfranchised from the elections after the
government decided in February that holders of temporary ID cards would
no longer have the right to vote.
In the Muslim neighbourhood of Tar Mwe in Yangon, Mohamed Hussain, in
his 50s, said he did not vote as a Muslims, but as a citizen.
Aung San Suu Kyi has also been criticised for not including Muslim
candidates in any of her partys lists. On Thursday, she told journalists not
to exaggerate the issue.
Aye Myint, a 41-year-old construction labourer and a Muslim, said Aung San
Suu Kyi was still the countrys best bet but he was worried that his relatives

back in Rakhine would not be able to vote. He said: I can because I moved
to Yangon 25 years ago. But I believe that if Aung San Suu Kyi wins there
will be progress for Muslims in this country.
Additional reporting by Sara Perria in Tae Mwe
Posted by Thavam