YCDC election commission calls for full voting rights

By Kyaw Phone Kyaw   |   Friday, 27 March 2015
An election commission report into Yangon’s heavily criticised municipal election in December has recommended scrapping the one-vote-per-household rule and allowing all adults over the age of 18 to cast a ballot, commission head U Tin Aye said yesterday.

A Yangon resident votes in the December 2014 election. (Aung Htay Hlaing/The Myanmar Times)

“The constitution gives voting rights to every person over 18. Only the YCDC election acted like that. It is against civil rights,” he told The Myanmar Times.

Most people in Yangon lost their voting rights in the December 27 election, the first municipal election in the city for 50 years. Out of 5.2 million people, only 401,000 were able to ballots under the election act, which gave one vote per household that possessed government residency documents. The act was widely criticised by regional hluttaw MPs, election monitors, civil society organisations and the media.

“The next election should be held after amending the election act. The act has many weak points,” U Tin Aye said.

Ko Aung Tun, an independent researcher involved in the review of the YCDC election, agreed that voting should be expanded. But he noted that most political parties – which are banned from contesting municipal elections – were not interested in amending the law.

“Now only civil society organizations speak a lot about this, but the parties don’t like it. They are ignoring the issue,” he said, adding that they were only interested in national elections.

He said the law should be changed to allow political parties to compete.

“They should also raise public awareness. And they should point out the specific facts about amending the act in the Yangon regional hluttaw,” he said.

The act does not specify limits for campaign financing, allowing the richest candidates to win seats, he said.

U Tin Aye said preparation for elections should be extended from three months to at least six.

Daw Nyo Nyo Thin, a Yangon region MP, said she had already submitted a proposal to the speaker of the regional hluttaw that the YCDC election act be amended before end-2015. She said she was hopeful that the Union Solidarity and Development Party, which holds a massive majority in the hluttaw, would not oppose amending the act following a barrage of criticism by the public and media.

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