YANGON (Reuters) – Yarzar Tun’s whole family backed Myanmar’s Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in the landslide 2015 election that swept her to power. As fighting this year in western Rakhine state crept closer to his home, he decided he would not vote for her again.
People wearing protective gear line up to vote at a polling station during the general election in Taungup, Rakhine State, Myanmar, November 8, 2020. ÊREUTERS/Stringer
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) has claimed another commanding win in a parliamentary election on Sunday, the second since the end of half a century of military rule. But in Rakhine the NLD was rejected by voters such as Yarzar Tun and his family, who backed an ethnic nationalist party instead.
“When the war got worse, the MPs we elected couldn’t speak out about our difficulties,” said the 38-year-old lawyer. “People worry every day. When will the bombs fall on them?”
While counting is still going on in many places, the NLD has won more than 80 percent of the seats so far announced, including in some ethnic minority areas.
In Rakhine, however, the party lost most of the seats it took in 2015, a result some analysts said highlighted the deepening sense of grievance many there harbour against a central government dominated by the ethnic Bamar majority that increases the risk of further conflict.
About two-thirds of the state’s population were unable to vote after the election commission shut some polling stations, citing fighting between government troops and the Arakan Army (AA) insurgent group, prompting complaints that voting was only being allowed to go ahead in areas where the NLD had more support.
The election commission has denied gerrymandering and said the poll station closures were necessary for security.
Zaw Zaw Tun, secretary of the Rakhine Ethnic Congress, a humanitarian group that distributes aid to the tens of thousands displaced by the insurgency, said turnout was low, in contrast to the long lines that formed before dawn elsewhere in Myanmar.
In Rakhine, Zaw Zaw Tun said, “people have lost trust in parties and politics, and gained interest in armed revolution”.
NLD spokesman Monywa Aung Shin blamed the violence and what he described as an “intimidation campaign” against ruling party candidates for their losses in Rakhine, but promised to negotiate with the nationalist candidates that won.
‘SUPER-SIZED CONFLICT’
The ethnic Rakhine insurgency, believed to include thousands of rebels, poses a serious threat to Suu Kyi’s government in a region already destabilised by a military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims.
More than 730,000 Rohingyas fled the army crackdown in 2017, a campaign that U.N investigators said was carried out with “genocidal intent”. Myanmar denies accusations of genocide during what it says was a legitimate counterinsurgency campaign.
The AA, who recruit from the mostly Buddhist majority, are fighting for greater autonomy for their impoverished state. The central government has long had a weak grip in Rakhine, which borders Bangladesh and is largely separated from the rest of Myanmar by a range of jungle-clad mountains.
In 2015 most of Rakhine’s seats were won by the nationalist Arakan National Party (ANP) – which strengthened its grip in Sunday’s vote – but its victory largely failed to translate into political power after Suu Kyi appointed an NLD minister to oversee the region.
Suu Kyi has vowed to “crush” the insurgency, while the government has cut off internet access to the state.
The United Nations has accused the military of further abuses in Rakhine that it says may amount to war crimes, including arbitrary arrests, torture and deaths in custody, and extrajudicial killings.
The army denies allegations of abuses or targeting civilians and has declared the AA a terrorist organisation.
The conflict appears to have cost the NLD its base in the mostly peaceful south of Rakhine, an area with strong cultural ties to the rest of the country.
“The fact that we won far and wide in southern Rakhine… is because the spirit of nationalism in people from those areas has become strengthened,” said Aye Nu Sein, spokeswoman for the ANP.
Khin Maung Yi, an NLD candidate in the state capital of Sittwe, told Reuters by phone he had only won 4.8 per cent of the vote. “The main thing is nationalism here,” he said.
Yarzar Tun, the lawyer, lives in the southern town of Taungup, which flipped to the ANP. He said though the area had been spared the worst of the fighting, he resented the NLD lawmakers elected last time for failing to speak out against abuses.
David Mathieson, a political analyst and former Human Rights Watch researcher in Myanmar, said perceived shortcomings of the polls risked fuelling the insurgency.
“That is the real fear of these elections,” he said. “That their conduct could super-size support for the AA and herald years of bitter armed conflict.”
Reporting by Shoon Naing; Additional reporting by Sam Aung Moon and Poppy McPherson; Writing by Poppy McPherson; Editing by Alex Richardson
WINNIPEG – The federal New Democrats have kept a longtime stronghold in the Elmwood-Transcona riding in Winnipeg.
The NDP’s Leila Dance won a close battle over Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds, and says the community has spoken in favour of priorities such as health care and the cost of living.
Elmwood-Transcona has elected a New Democrat in every election except one since the riding was formed in 1988.
The seat became open after three-term member of Parliament Daniel Blaikie resigned in March to take a job with the Manitoba government.
A political analyst the NDP is likely relieved to have kept the seat in what has been one of their strongest urban areas.
Christopher Adams, an adjunct professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba, says NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh worked hard to keep the seat in a tight race.
“He made a number of visits to Winnipeg, so if they had lost this riding it would have been disastrous for the NDP,” Adams said.
The strong Conservative showing should put wind in that party’s sails, Adams added, as their percentage of the popular vote in Elmwood-Transcona jumped sharply from the 2021 election.
“Even though the Conservatives lost this (byelection), they should walk away from it feeling pretty good.”
Dance told reporters Monday night she wants to focus on issues such as the cost of living while working in Ottawa.
“We used to be able to buy a cart of groceries for a hundred dollars and now it’s two small bags. That is something that will affect everyone in this riding,” Dance said.
Liberal candidate Ian MacIntyre placed a distant third,
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say the Liberals have “all sorts of reflections” to make after losing a second stronghold in a byelection in Montreal Monday night.
His comments come as the Liberal cabinet gathers for its first regularly scheduled meeting of the fall sitting of Parliament, which began Monday.
Trudeau’s Liberals were hopeful they could retain the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, but those hopes were dashed after the Bloc Québécois won it in an extremely tight three-way race with the NDP.
Louis-Philippe Sauvé, an administrator at the Institute for Research in Contemporary Economics, beat Liberal candidate Laura Palestini by less than 250 votes. The NDP finished about 600 votes back of the winner.
It is the second time in three months that Trudeau’s party lost a stronghold in a byelection. In June, the Conservatives defeated the Liberals narrowly in Toronto-St. Paul’s.
The Liberals won every seat in Toronto and almost every seat on the Island of Montreal in the last election, and losing a seat in both places has laid bare just how low the party has fallen in the polls.
“Obviously, it would have been nicer to be able to win and hold (the Montreal riding), but there’s more work to do and we’re going to stay focused on doing it,” Trudeau told reporters ahead of this morning’s cabinet meeting.
When asked what went wrong for his party, Trudeau responded “I think there’s all sorts of reflections to take on that.”
In French, he would not say if this result puts his leadership in question, instead saying his team has lots of work to do.
Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet will hold a press conference this morning, but has already said the results are significant for his party.
“The victory is historic and all of Quebec will speak with a stronger voice in Ottawa,” Blanchet wrote on X, shortly after the winner was declared.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and his party had hoped to ride to a win in Montreal on the popularity of their candidate, city councillor Craig Sauvé, and use it to further their goal of replacing the Liberals as the chief alternative to the Conservatives.
The NDP did hold on to a seat in Winnipeg in a tight race with the Conservatives, but the results in Elmwood-Transcona Monday were far tighter than in the last several elections. NDP candidate Leila Dance defeated Conservative Colin Reynolds by about 1,200 votes.
Singh called it a “big victory.”
“Our movement is growing — and we’re going to keep working for Canadians and building that movement to stop Conservative cuts before they start,” he said on social media.
“Big corporations have had their governments. It’s the people’s time.”
New Democrats recently pulled out of their political pact with the government in a bid to distance themselves from the Liberals, making the prospects of a snap election far more likely.
Trudeau attempted to calm his caucus at their fall retreat in Nanaimo, B.C, last week, and brought former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney on as an economic adviser in a bid to shore up some credibility with voters.
The latest byelection loss will put more pressure on him as leader, with many polls suggesting voter anger is more directed at Trudeau himself than at Liberal policies.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
The New Democrats have declared a federal byelection victory in their Winnipeg stronghold riding of Elmwood—Transcona.
The NDP candidate Leila Dance told supporters in a tearful speech that even though the final results weren’t in, she expected she would see them in Ottawa.
With several polls still to be counted, Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds conceded defeat and told his volunteers that they should be proud of what the Conservatives accomplished in the campaign.
Political watchers had a keen eye on the results to see if the Tories could sway traditionally NDP voters on issues related to labour and affordability.
Meanwhile in the byelection race in the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun the NDP, Liberals and Bloc Québécois remained locked in an extremely tight three-way race as the results trickled in slowly.
The Liberal stronghold riding had a record 91 names on the ballot, and the results aren’t expected until the early hours of the morning.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
