Myanmar holds national vote

YANGON, Myanmar – Myanmar’s secretive military-ruled government gave no sign today of when results from the country’s first election in two decades would be released, though it’s almost certain power will remain in the hands of the junta and its political proxies.

What’s unclear is whether the vote marks a small step toward democratic rule. While most observers have rejected the poll as a sham engineered to solidify military control, even some critics say having a parliament for the first time in 22 years could provide an opening for eventual change.

There was little doubt that the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party would emerge with an enormous share of the parliamentary seats from Sunday’s poll, despite widespread popular opposition to 48 years of military rule. It fielded 1,112 candidates for the 1,159 seats in the two-house national parliament and 14 regional parliaments, while the largest anti-government party, the National Democratic Force, contested just 164 spots.

Detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party won a landslide victory in the last elections in 1990 but was barred from taking office, urged a boycott of the vote. Hundreds of potential opposition candidates were either in prison or, like Suu Kyi, under house arrest.

The military has ruled Myanmar since 1962, when it was known as Burma. Decades of human rights abuses and mistreatment of its ethnic minorities have turned the Southeast Asian nation into a diplomatic outcast. The junta has squandered Myanmar’s vast natural resources through economic mismanagement and found itself allied with international pariahs like North Korea.