Analysis: Burma’s tentative steps continue

“No need to ask me that question,” she says. The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) candidate is her boss.

Finding another USDP supporter elsewhere in this normally sleepy river town of Mawlamyaing is harder.

When Aung San Suu Kyi, who leads the rival National League for Democracy (NLD), is on a two-day campaign tour of the region, the streets throng with people waving NLD flags and shouting “Long live Mother Suu!”

However, the NLD, which is fielding candidates in all but one of the 48 seats to be contested on 1 April, faces a number of challenges. These include candidates with low recognition, an inexperienced and still-fearful electorate, and a well-funded incumbent whom the NLD alleges is playing dirty. After decades of military dictatorship, a nominally civilian government last year embarked on a series of dramatic reforms. It has released political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, relaxed media controls and vowed to tackle its dysfunctional economy.

With just three weeks left till the polls open, the party is already crying foul. It has accused the government of hampering its populist campaigning by a sudden ban on the use of sports grounds for political rallies.

Suu Kyi’s rally on Sunday was held not in Mawlamyaing, but on a scorched field amid a rubber plantation about 10 kilometres from town. The five-thousand-strong crowd arrived on a fleet of trucks and buses.

President Thein Sein’s administration seems torn between avoiding actions that could potentially derail the lifting of western sanctions, and reverting to old ways.

Like all political parties contesting the by-elections, the NLD is allowed to record a 15-minute campaign speech to be shown twice on state-owned MRTV. The text must be submitted in advance to be approved by the ministry of information.

One paragraph in Suu Kyi’s speech, in which she criticised past military governments for “oppressing the people,” was cut, she told Radio Free Asia.

However, the government has yet to agree to international observers, with Thein Sein vowing only to “seriously consider” monitors from the Association of South East Asian Nations, the 10-member regional group that Myanmar will chair in 2014.

• Andrew RC Marshall is special correspondent, Thailand and Indochina, for Reuters