Burma Election 2012

There are two (2) differing reactions to the recent elections in Burma:

1. A useful political exercise but no real transfer of power from the military;
2. A step to a liberal democracy with business opportunities opening up.

Giles Ji Ungpakorn writes that there are Two sides to Burma's elections:

Elections are important political events that can be used to advertise policies, can often give encouragement and can be used to mobilise activists outside parliament. For these reasons the elections in Burma in early April were extremely important for the democratic movement. …

However, we must not fall into the trap of thinking that these elections are a “first step” in some top-down designed “road map” towards democracy. Instead they are a desperate attempt by the Burmese junta to find legitimacy for the continuation of the dictatorship. No doubt the generals were well aware of the uprisings in the Middle East and needed to shore up their authoritarian rule.

Peter Hartcher disagrees with the second point in his analysis of Despair and hope in the tale of two tyrannies. He see a genuine attempt to get economic progress going in Burma:

…because of Burma's membership of the Association of South-East Asian Nations, the military dictators got to travel frequently to other capitals in the region and saw the prosperity and success in Singapore, Jakarta, Bangkok and elsewhere. They “grew more comfortable” with the concept of political power-sharing and economic liberalisation, [Nicholas Farrelly] posits.

Giles Ji Ungpakorn would reply that this is an example of setting up democracy for economic exploitation:

Right-wing analysts always state that democratic transition comes from the actions of the ruling elites and Western governments “designing” gradual steps towards democracy. We can see what this means in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan. Western rulers do not give a fig about democracy and human rights. What they, and authoritarian governments like China, want to stress is “stability” for making profits with a thin veneer of legitimacy thrown in for good measure.

True democracy cannot be obtained through the elections in a Capitalist society because Giles Ji Ungpakorn says that:

Elections under capitalist democracy never lead to state power changing hands because many important elements of the capitalist state are not subject to elections or even accountability. For example, we never get to elect capitalists who make important investment decisions that affect millions of peoples’ lives. In addition to this, judges, military and police commanders, top civil servants and those who control the media are never elected. But that does not mean that we should ignore elections.