Burma Will Have ‘to Wait a While’ for Free Elections, Ruler Says

Gen. Saw Maung, the military leader who promised free and fair elections in Burma after his soldiers in September had crushed a violent, summer-long popular rebellion, now says that “we’ve got to wait a while.”

Addressing reporters who accompanied Thai army chief Chavalit Yongchaiyudh on a one-day trip to Rangoon this week, Saw Maung, president of a military junta, insisted: “We will definitely hold this multi-party democratic election, there’s no question about it.”

But he set no date, saying that his government must first impose order on an already cowed populace, restore transport and communications disrupted by the rebellion and improve the living conditions of the Burmese.

“There’s been progress in these three main objectives, but we’ve got to wait a while,” the general said.

Pressed for a date by Thai reporters, Saw Maung snapped: “This is an internal affair. Why should you be interested?”

Political opponents of the regime, who failed to find unity when the government was reeling in the face of massive demonstrations in July and August, remain unable to form a solid front in the face of the tight military rule. The strongest coalition of the summer split last month.

Aung Gyi, a former general whose dissenting, leaked letters helped trigger the rebellion, walked out of the National League for Democracy, accusing his opposition colleague, Aung San Suu Kyi, of sheltering Communists in her faction.

League’s Voice Diminished

His defection diminished the voice of the league, one of more than 150 political parties that have registered under government election laws. Saw Maung said of the parties, in what appears to be a fair assessment, “They are not ready yet.”

Many of the new parties, diplomats say, are merely small groups interested in political discussions and feel they need the party cover to escape government harassment. A quarter-century of repressive rule by Saw Maung’s mentor, Ne Win, who by all accounts still calls the shots for the current regime, gutted politics in Burma.

Ne Win’s Burma Socialist Program Party remains the strongest and best financed, under a new name--the National Unity Party. Military and government officials now are ostensibly banned from party membership, but the faces of the National Unity organization are largely those of the old Socialist Program Party, according to Rangoon-based diplomats visiting Bangkok.

The students and Buddhist monks who led the summer’s demonstrations, in which at least 1,000 protesters were shot to death, have been scattered or driven underground. According to Thai estimates, 7,000 students made their way to the guerrilla camps of Burma’s ethnic minorities along the Thai border, some in search of military training, others fleeing for their lives.

The Karens, Mons and other minorities who took them in found themselves overwhelmed by student demands for food and weapons. Some are being trained in guerrilla tactics, and others, who found the jungle life of the minority fighters too hard, have returned to their homes. Saw Maung said more than 1,500 have come back and asserted that only about 2,000 remain in the border areas.