Myanmar, an isolated country in Southeast Asia, held general elections for the People¡¦s Assembly in 2010, the first in twenty years and the second in fifty years. The military junta that has ruled the country for decades has been facing strong criticism from the international community. This research has systematically examined the historical development of the electoral laws and the overall electoral system of the Union of Myanmar (since October 2010 officially known as the Republic of the Union of Myanmar) during the period of 18 June 1989 up until the latest elections on 7 November 2011. Why did the military bother organizing elections? The latest elections were meant to give the impression that they would create a legitimate government. In reality, they were designed to preserve military rule under a façade of democracy. The junta learned a valuable lesson from the last free elections in 1990, which ended in a fiasco for the pro-junta parties, and did not leave it to the people's will in 2010. In order to effectively extend military rule, in 2008 the junta used a flawed referendum to approve a supremacy constitution, according to which the military automatically receives 25% of the seats in parliament. This constitution helped the junta impose several severe limitations on parties willing to participate in the 2010 elections, thus ensuring that the military-backed political parties would win most of the seats at stake. This thesis attempts to show the powerlessness of the masses against a system based on the creation of self-serving laws used by the ruling junta to control the society.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0804111-224449 |
| Date | 04 August 2011 |
| Creators | Kironská, Kristína |
| Contributors | Lin Wen-cheng, Tai Wan-ping, Samuel C. Y. Ku |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0804111-224449 |
| Rights | unrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive |
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