///Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s banned opposition has urged people to boycott the poll/// – Zoe Daniel of ABC/Reuters.

The Nobel Laureate need not urge people to boycott – nor, the opposite, urge them to support the poll. No one doubts that with ¼ of seats in parliament reserved for the military Suu Kyi and other key leaders of opposition/civil society banned from participating in the polls and 2,200 political prisoners still languishing in incarceration, this election will ever conform to internationally accepted standards of free and democratic elections. Yet the military junta has taken a step, which to them is a big step and let it not be said by it, as an excuse, that it allowed for elections but people didn’t want or not ready for it.

We’re talking about a country of 48 million in the vice grip of a military junta of about 480,000 comprising the generals the armed forces, including the police and the intelligence agencies and their drug courtiers and barons/cronies….Although Suu Kyi and other key leaders of her opposition party are banned from standing for elections, other political parties are not. If 99% of Myanmar populace, who cannot have an armed revolution to evict the junta, are also not going to give ‘a go’ at the ballot box (no matter how rigged), on whom else are they are going to look for reprieve and national salvation from this 1% oppressive albeit powerful group?

ASEAN leaders are not going to help beyond making high-faluting moral statements about human rights and democracy that they can’t even uphold within their own national backyards. They are keener on business and making Money – how their national corporations can sell M16 to Myanmar’s armed forces, help explore and extract, lay pipe lines for 90 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves and 3.2 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil reserves from Myanmar’s Yadana37 and Yetagun gas fields, provide safe havens from the generals’ laundered money and assets etc.

The US and European countries are not helping besides trade sanctions, which are ineffective as Myanmar’s exports to the U.S. and EU amounted to less than 4 percent of total overseas sales. The US has no pretext to invade like in the case of Iraq as its vital geopolitical interest in oil pipe lines is not in this region. China instead depends on Myanmar for its growing energy needs, has an interest in investing in pipeline and hydropower projects in Myanmar amounting to US$8.2 billion and China National Petroleum Corp. already started construction on oil and gas pipelines that traverse the whole of Myanmar. Lobbying the United nations for action against Myanmar military junta is not viable if China being a permanent Security Council member vetoes any UN’s initiatives in that direction.

It is a sad fact of life that people in any country is responsible for their own fate: if they are oppressed they have to use bullets or ballot to remove their oppressors. No one will help beyond lip service. As I said, if bullets are not used, then try the ballot no matter how rigged and skewed. You’ve got nothing to lose! If 48 million people can’t do anything againstr 1% of its own, who else can help?

Go out and vote. See what happens first. To preemptively tell the people not to vote is defeatist. Suu Kyi, to tell the people to try the option of ballot is, in the absence of alternatives, not the same as necessarily implying that you are legitimizing the elections as fair or democratic. After all you yourself are banned from standing as a candidate!

After all how many ASEAN countries can boast really free and democratic elections with level playing field being afforded to opposition parties?

In varying degrees fraud voter & Opposition intimidation, gerrymandering, control of press money politics, repressive security agencies and laws are order of the day at least amongst many of the ASEAN neighbours talking big way about “democracy” to Myanmar’s military junta.

Here the argument is if the Myanmar Military Junta concedes to an election based on a constitution with parliamentary system, then no matter how tainted by elements of control still preserved by the military elites, the transition from military rule to a system of civilian representation still represents an important milestone that Aung San Suu Kyi’s banned opposition should exploit than urge people to boycott the poll!

Don’t forget that taking Indonesia’s case, in 1965 the Military Junta deposed Sukarno from power with Suharto as Army Chief-of-Staff taking over power. Somehow the military junta there could make the transition to civilian rule. Though in the beginning the Army generals also dominated parliament but today we speak of Indonesia in positive tones of how comparatively enlightened the leadership of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is and how effective its anti corruption commission (KPK) is in combating corruption. However in 1997 Lt Gen Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was the Chief of the Armed Forces Social and Political Affairs Staff of the Indonesian military junta.

Thailand itself flip flops between military rule and civil rule. Before 1992 military junta ruled then in 1992 civilian protests forced military to return to barracks, then they came back again in 2006 when mass protests against the Thai Rak Thai party’s alleged corruption prompted the military to stage a coup d’état against Thaksin. Then a general election in December 2007 restored a civilian government, but the legacy of the Thai military’s frequent involvement in domestic politics remains even today – so what’s the problem?

Expecting the first tentative steps by Myanmar Military to civilian rule without it holding a trump card – expecting 100% free elections and total abandonment of power by military elites of the power they have always enjoyed 100% is an unrealistic expectation on Suu Kyi’s opposition party’s part.

It is through this kind of initial half baked democratic farce of a ballot cooked up by the Military that one hopes Myanmar’s populace will slowly through participation in such a system and by combination of learning democratic rights exert sufficient pressure on the flawed system to improve its democratic features and over time keep the military eventually out of politics.

The transition from military to civilian rule has to be a painstaking piece meal step by step process.

Short of a violent confrontation with military with many loss of lives, Myanmar’s Opposition can’t just expect to tear down overnight a military edifice and replace it with democratic institutions.

Civilian rule has to evolve, and this election is the first streak of dawn after a long dark night of 100% military rule. Don’t just boycott it.