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Jakarta Post

RI denies plan for new Myanmar polls

Foreign minister to fly to Myanmar on Thursday, according to leaked document

Dian Septiari (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Wed, February 24, 2021

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RI denies plan for new Myanmar polls

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ndonesia has denied reports that it plans to hold Myanmar’s military junta to its promise of ceding power after fresh elections and has called on the country to resolve its electoral dispute “through available legal mechanisms”, after protesters criticized Jakarta for appearing to give credence to the junta’s narrative.

Crowds of protesters gathered in front of the Indonesian embassies in Yangon and Bangkok on Tuesday to demand support for the November 2020 election results, following reports on Monday that Indonesia had proposed a plan that involved advocating for new elections to be held within a year, a claim Indonesia denies.

Myanmar’s armed forces, the Tatmadaw, seized power early this month from Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government over alleged fraud in the November election. Suu Kyi’s National League of Democracy (NLD) secured a landslide win in November, claiming 83 percent of the parliamentary seats and fending off pro-junta challengers, leading to an embittered response from the military elite.

The junta claims it will remain in power until the election dispute is resolved and new elections are held.

The response from Southeast Asia has been varied, with Indonesia advocating for a peaceful settlement and respect for the rule of law.

However, Reuters cited three anonymous sources claiming that Indonesia was putting forward an “action plan” that effectively accepted the military status quo, angering the people of Myanmar.

Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah dismissed the claims, saying Indonesia’s sole objective at the moment was to set up a meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers to resolve the political crisis “as a family”, as President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo had instructed.

To achieve that, he said, Indonesia had worked closely with Brunei — the chair of ASEAN this year — and other ministers from the region. He added that it was too early to say that Indonesia had a plan that supported new elections in Myanmar.

“That is not Indonesia’s position at all. [...] What we want to underline is how we seek a solution in Myanmar through an inclusive democratic political process that involves all parties,” he said at a virtual press conference on Tuesday.

Read also: Indonesian plan calls for Southeast Asia to hold Myanmar junta to election pledge

Faizasyah said there had been no shift in Indonesia’s position since it issued a statement on Feb. 1, the day the military detained Myanmar’s civilian leader and other senior figures of the NLD.

Earlier on Tuesday, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi told Reuters that the well-being of Myanmar's people was paramount.

“The inclusive democratic transition should be pursued according to the wishes of the Myanmar people. Any way forward is the means to this end,” Retno said in a message sent to Reuters by her office.

Reuters also quoted a leaked document saying that Retno would fly to Myanmar on Thursday in the first known trip to the Southeast Asian nation by a foreign envoy since the coup. Along with several other countries in the region, Indonesia reiterated the importance of respecting the principles enshrined in the ASEAN Charter: the rule of law, good governance, democracy and constitutional government.

Retno met her counterparts in Brunei and Singapore last week and is scheduled to meet Thailand’s top diplomat on Wednesday to discuss the situation.

International pressure is piling on for ASEAN to respond to the crisis, which has seen hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets across Myanmar and at least three civilians killed in protests.

Representing the largest democracy in the region, Retno embarked on a series of short visits to coordinate a collective response in a region with a wide range of political systems, from democracies and quasi-autocracies to one of the last remaining absolute monarchies in the world.

“Based on those consultations, later on [...] we will form or develop agreed points of discussion, and we will develop policy options that will be further discussed during the ASEAN foreign ministers’ special meeting,” Faizasyah said.

Indonesia has sought to be a steward of Myanmar’s transition to democracy and has offered support to develop the country’s electoral system. In the November election, more than 90 political parties competed for parliamentary seats.

Most of these parties were drawn along ethnic and state lines, with only the NLD and the pro-junta Union Solidarity and Development Party having broad national bases.

Read also: Indonesia ‘shuttles’ to Brunei for Myanmar coup response

Ahead of the November election, Human Rights Watch raised concerns about Myanmar’s discriminatory laws, including one that excluded minority groups, such as Rohingya Muslims.

Other contentious issues include frequent criminal prosecution of government critics, unequal party access to government media and the absence of a truly independent election commission.

Ichal Supriyadi from the Asia Democracy Network said the democratic system in Myanmar had not matured over the past few years, considering the few mechanisms put in place to resolve election disputes.

He said there was no rigid and comprehensive mechanism within Myanmar’s Union Election Commission (UEC), although “they do have what they call tribunals, which can call up or summon people who have submitted complaints, listen and try to provide verdicts”.

Unlike Indonesia’s Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu), which has partial adjudication power, the UEC has no legal basis for adjudication.

“The UEC is a member of the Association of World [Election] Bodies. It is able to get assistance to establish strong foundations for a dispute settlement mechanism, as long as the law is implemented and respected,” Ichal said separately in a webinar on Tuesday.

Some experts saw the landslide victory of the NLD in November and the wide support it gained from Myanmar’s citizens as encouraging developments in the democratic transformation of Myanmar — at least before the coup.

The Indonesian government still hopes that Myanmar will be able to fi nd a way, based on democratic principles, to resolve disputes from the general election.

“If […] the mechanism itself does not exist in Myanmar, we are at least going to convey some of the procedural principles that apply in democratic countries,” said Faizasyah of the Foreign Ministry.

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