USDP in memo accuses NLD of wrongdoing in 1990 election

Thursday, 29 July 2010 20:01 Mizzima News

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – The Burmese junta-sponsored Union Solidarity and Development Party has accused the National League for Democracy party of rigging votes in the 1990 general election through “biased” polling booth officials, a copy of its directive to USDP branches obtained by Mizzima says.

The comprehensive guidelines include a statement expressing confidence that the party led by Prime Minister Thein Sin will win in upcoming national elections, the first since the NLD won an overwhelming parliamentary majority 20 years ago. The junta rejected the results and refused to hand over power to the Burmese people.

“As there is no major opposition party in the upcoming election, as other smaller parties do not have enough preparation in all aspects to compete with our party, as our party is well organised and strong, and as our party is winning support from the broad masses of the people, our party will definitely win in this upcoming 2010 general election”, the party directive claims.

Though it omitted the name of the “major opposition party”, the directive was clearly referring to the main opposition force, the NLD, which refused to meet a May 6 deadline to re-register as a party – a move that would have forced it to expel leader Aung San Suu Kyi – and opted to boycott the vote. The NLD and other critics of the junta say the vote is a sham designed to legitimise the junta’s 50-year grip on power.

The junta-backed party instead chose in its directive to dismiss the NLD’s historic broad-based popularity with its first direct attack on the party’s 1990 poll win.

In the first documented accusation of electoral impropriety levelled by any party or individual against the NLD, the directive claims the party was involved in vote-rigging at the polls 20 years ago, and accuses electoral officers of bias.

“We should learn lessons from the 1990 general election in which the main NLD party won a landslide victory in collusion with polling booth officials biased towards this party”, it says.

The party is further directed to organise the “thugs and lumpen (the Marxist term for the lowest level of the working class)” to help win the election for the USDP, an offshoot of the often-violent nationalist group, Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), established by the junta 17 years ago. The party is led by senior military officers turned “civilian” party officials.

“Thugs and lumpen who are outcasts in the local community shall be organised and kept in touch with our party”, it says.

The directive explains that recruitment of the so-called lumpen is a precaution against other parties and individuals taking advantage of them. The basic principle of the party with its “Lion” logo, it says, is to organise mainly workers and peasants.

Campaigning should be aimed at influential persons in the community, the directive says, and party candidates are urged to provide financial assistance to the party.

Members are also instructed to report the actions of “anti-party persons” to party higher officials, but are warned not to criticise competing parties on fears of a public backlash against the USDP – that the party would bring the people together against it as a “common enemy”.

They are also ordered to take photos and video on polling day and to keep watch, it says, to prevent vote-rigging and partiality in polling, furthering its claims of past malfeasance in the 1990 elections.

In its labour policy, the directive promises the party will amend laws to broaden labour rights and strive for a better social-welfare system in the country. It says the minimum wage will be increased and claims migrant workers in foreign lands will be protected.

In its agricultural policy, the directive claims farming will be free of government intervention and that there will be a free market for produce.