Even ASSK attended Burma Armed-Forces Day. |
Eighty-eight percent of respondents indicated that they thought the country was on the right track, while 6 percent thought Burma was headed in the wrong direction, according to a poll of 3,000 people conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI), a Washington-based organization that receives funding from the US government.
The IRI results seem to indicate that public sentiment runs counter to views voiced by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who last year criticized the government for providing “no tangible changes” in Burma, which was ruled for five decades by a military dictatorship that ceded power in 2011.
That military, condemned for decades by the West for a long history of human rights abuses perpetrated against its own people, scored higher in a favorability assessment than any other institution in Burma, according to the poll released late last week. Eighty-four percent of respondents said they viewed the military favorably or very favorably, beating out the ruling coalition (74%), the opposition (70%) and the courts (62%), among others.
Respondents said the country had made progress on democratization and women’s rights, but lost ground in dealing with ethnic and sectarian tensions. Fifty-seven percent of survey takers said ethnic violence in Burma had increased from a year ago.
The poll also shed light on where the public stands ahead of elections slated for next year that will largely pit the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) against Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).
Burmese people love their strong army, period. |
The USDP was seen as more capable of ending ethnic conflict, improving the economy, strengthening the nation and improving security. The country’s main opposition party was only viewed as more adept at improving education, by 41 percent of respondents compared with 37 percent for the USDP.
The NLD fared better in questions related to which party was seen as representing the interests of women, poor people and democratic principles.
Regarding constitutional reform, which many democracy advocates both inside Burma and outside the country see as a critical litmus test for the reformist government, 64 percent of respondents said they supported a change to Article 59(f), a controversial provision that bars Suu Kyi from running for president because she married a foreigner and has two foreign passport-holding sons. Twenty-one percent said they opposed such a change.
As ethnic groups continue to call for a federal political system that devolves power to state and divisional governments, the survey finds that Burmese people on the whole are divided on the issue. Asked whether the country should decentralize its governance structure, 57 percent said they preferred a centralized system, while 35 percent supported more autonomy for states and divisions.
Burma’s current economic situation received favorable assessments, with 85 percent of respondents gauging the economy as good or very good.
Growing 6.5 percent last year, and predicted by the government to expand 9.1 percent in 2014, Burma’s economy is one of the region’s fastest growing, but the country is also one of Southeast Asia’s most impoverished.
Despite the overall economic optimism, 96 percent of respondents said low income was a very or somewhat serious issue, and nearly as many people cited unemployment as similarly problematic. Poverty reduction received the worst marks among a list of performance areas that the public was asked to evaluate the government on.
Burmese people love their strong navy too. |
Two foreign telecommunications companies, Ooredoo and Telenor, have said they intend to make significant inroads in connecting the populace by the end of this year, after receiving licenses in January to set up mobile networks in Burma.
The survey was taken from late December to early February of this year, across all 14 of Burma’s states and divisions. The IRI said the poll included the views of “a national representative sample of voting age adults,” roughly in proportion to the estimated ethnic, religious and socioeconomic makeup of the country.
But at least one political analyst in Burma cast doubts on the validity of the poll, saying the results were “rubbish” and represented a form of “indirect lobbying” by the IRI for the Burmese government.
“The IRI is funded by the United States government, and the United States government would like to show that their engagement with the Burmese government is very successful, that they are gaining positive momentum,” said Yan Myo Thein, a political commentator based in Rangoon. “All these figures and the data are only rubbish.”
For its part, the IRI states that the opinion research was “compiled in accordance with international standards for market and social research methodologies.”
“At the midrange the survey has a confidence interval of plus and minus two percent with a confidence level of 95 percent,” according to the report, which is based on field work conducted by the Myanmar Survey Research group under the supervision of the IRI.
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(Blogger’s Notes: Political forces are rapidly polarizing in used-to-be-deeply-leftist Burma because of our colonial past. The long-lasting legacy of pre-WW2 extreme-leftwing student-leaders like Aung San and Kyaw Nyein had pushed Burma deep into the left, but the resulting damage is now being rapidly repaired by the military-back pseudo-civilian government led by former army generals like Thein Sein the president and Shwe Mann the parliament speaker.
While conservative Burmese military and Thein Sein Government together with Buddhist monks-led nationalists like 969 and Ah-myo-zount groups are veering towards right by themselves, International Socialists and foreign-leftwingers like George Soros are slowly pulling previously-extremely-popular groups like Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD and Min Ko Naing’s 88-Generationers back to left.
(Blogger’s Notes: Political forces are rapidly polarizing in used-to-be-deeply-leftist Burma because of our colonial past. The long-lasting legacy of pre-WW2 extreme-leftwing student-leaders like Aung San and Kyaw Nyein had pushed Burma deep into the left, but the resulting damage is now being rapidly repaired by the military-back pseudo-civilian government led by former army generals like Thein Sein the president and Shwe Mann the parliament speaker.
George Soros with 88-Generationers' leaders (2013). |
Out of all 200 odd political parties and groupings in nowadays Burma none has the word Socialist or Social-Democrat in their names. Most have National or Democracy or the derivatives of those two words in their names.
No wonder Aung San Su Kyi’s NLD and 88-Generationers are losing people of Burma rapidly to the right-wing military and the Buddhist-Nationalists.)
Aung San Suu Kyi making peace with 969 and Ah-myo-zount nationalist-Buddhist monks. |
Full Text in English of IRI's Survey
IRI's press release in Burmese
Burma In Limbo - Part 3