In Myanmar, an Election Doomed to Fail
AFTER five decades of brutal authoritarian rule, Myanmar’s military leaders have, in recent months, legalized labor unions, increased press freedom and released political dissidents. The opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest until November 2010, is now running in the coming by-elections.
Yet those reforms are bound to fail and could plunge the country back into violence unless the government addresses important ethnic divisions. Myanmar, formerly Burma, is potentially explosive because its many ethnic groups are concentrated in their own regions — a situation ripe for bloody secessions.
In recent weeks, the military signed a truce with the Shan ethnic group and ordered a cessation of operations against the Karen group in the southeast. … Seguir leyendo »