Women poorly represented in Myanmar polls

Fri, 05 Nov 2010

Yangon - Less than 4 per cent of the 3,071 candidates contesting Myanmar's general election this weekend are female, the Myanmar Times reported Friday.

Myanmar's best-known female politician, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, has been excluded from the polls. She is serving an 18-month house detention sentence that is due to expire on November 13, when she may or may not be released.

While there are few woman candidates in the election, the first to be held in two decades, several of the contesting parties have women in senior positions.

The Democratic (Myanmar) Party is led by Nay Yee Ba Swe, the daughter of former premier Ba Swe.

The Union of Myanmar party is also led by a woman, Nan Shwe Kyar.

"The number of women involved in this year's election is still better than in 1990 and I think in five years there will be more female candidates," she told the Myanmar Times.

The May 1990 elections were won by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party. Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar independence leader Aung San, has spent 15 of the past 20 years under house arrest, and won the Nobel peace prize in 1991.

Her party has refused to contest Sunday's polls as new regulations would have forced them to drop Suu Kyi as a member to qualify.

Western observers have complained that the polls are neither free nor fair, nor inclusive.

It was widely believed that the election would be won by the well-financed, pro-junta Union Solidarity and Development Party, which is packed with former military men and government officials. The second-largest party is the National Unity Party, which is associated with the former regime under military strongman Ne Win, who ruled Myanmar between 1962 and 1988.

Each of these parties have fielded more than 1,000 candidates to contest the 1,159 seats up for grabs in Myanmar's three houses of parliament.

The two military-flavored parties have only "a handful of women in their ranks," the Myanmar Times said.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/352056,poorly-represented-myanmar-polls.html.