Asean leaders face turning point in Myanmar stand-off

Joe Cochrane in Jakarta

Vietnam might just be ruing its luck in hosting the 2010 Asean summit of Southeast Asian leaders beginning in Hanoi today.

At a time when Vietnam and other member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations want to talk about economic integration and how a new free trade agreement with China is faring, a familiar bogeyman threatens again to overshadow the gathering: Myanmar.

The sad, perpetual deadlock between Myanmar's ruling military junta and pro-democracy opposition led by Aung San Suu Kyi is an old story. So much so that in recent years, Asean leaders have not felt compelled to highlight its most recalcitrant member's continued detention of Suu Kyi, human rights abuses, and stifling of democracy in its end-of-summit communique.

But Asean is facing a potentially decisive flashpoint this year with Myanmar. The junta has announced that it will hold elections sometime this year for the first time since it nullified elections in 1990, which were won by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD). Its election law, announced last month, bans Suu Kyi from running for office and requires the NLD to expel her because she has a criminal record.

The NLD refused, announcing on March 29 that it will boycott the election in protest. In doing so, the NLD was automatically dissolved under the law, and Suu Kyi remains under house arrest in Yangon.

If the junta goes ahead with the elections, without the country's main opposition party and its iconic leader, the poll will be derided as a sham. The United States and European Union will likely impose new sanctions against the junta, which in turn will declare the polls valid and further entrench itself. The entire 20-year struggle, which has seen the Myanmese people suffer in stagnation, will go back to square one.

"It's kind of a Mexican stand-off," said Simon Tay of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. "The NLD is now illegal, and then you may have an illegitimate government elected soon."

What happens in Hanoi today and tomorrow could determine whether Myanmar finally slides into the abyss. Asean's leading members - Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand - have all repeatedly urged the junta to honour its promises to make the elections credible and inclusive to all political groups. However, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, which are not fans of multiparty democracy, mostly consider the conflict an internal matter.

Indonesian President Dr Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will be trying to push the envelope. According to a draft copy of his speech for tonight's working dinner of summit leaders, Yudhoyono will call for "the widest participation of all social and political elements in Myanmar, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

In Thailand, Thaung Htun, a spokesman for Myanmar's government in exile, called on Asean to make Myanmar a summit priority, saying the country "was at the breaking point" following the NLD's boycott announcement.

"The focus should no longer be the election, but dialogue between the regime and stakeholders so there can be a common framework for the election process," he said.

Teuku Faizasyah, a spokesman for the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, hinted that some behind-the-scenes negotiating could take place aimed at letting Suu Kyi and the NLD take part in the election.

"Politics is very fluid, and you might expect something to change direction in the next few weeks. You never know," he said. "But the two sides need to show some flexibility."

For the NLD, that could mean abiding by the ban on Suu Kyi running for a parliamentary seat or presidency, on condition that she is released and allowed to campaign on the party's behalf, according to Tay.

The administration of US President Barack Obama has reached out to the junta as part of an engagement strategy with pariah states. Now, both sides are watching what the other would do, said David Steinberg, a Myanmar expert from Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Steinberg said the junta is determined to hold the election this year regardless of any pressure from Asean or the West to amend the election law. "They were never going to allow Suu Kyi to run," he said.