Junta’s Vote ‘Yes’ Media Blitz Appears to Backfire

By WAI MOE
The junta has launched a daily media campaign designed to promote “Yes” votes during the May 10 constitutional referendum, but evidence is mounting its pro-constitution blitz has convinced many people to vote “No.”

The state-run The New Light of Myanmar said in a front-page headline on Tuesday, “To approve the State Constitution is a national duty for all people. Let us all cast ‘Yes’ votes in the national interest.”

A back-page headline said, “Let everyone who loathes foreign interference and manipulation and who opposes puppet governments with colonialist strings vote ‘Yes’ for ratification of the Constitution.”

Meanwhile, members of the pro-junta mass organization Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) and local authorities, wearing T-shirts with pro-constitution messages, are distributing pamphlets in a vote “Yes” campaign across the country.

The regime recently started broadcasting pro-constitution propaganda on state-run television programs.

Sources told The Irrawaddy that most people are now more determined than ever to vote “No” because of the junta’s “Yes” campaign via state-run-media and mass organizations.

“People are annoyed by the propaganda on state-TV and in newspapers. The military rulers urge people to vote ‘yes’ in the referendum,” said a Rangoon businessman. “But now more people will vote against the constitution because they just dislike the juntas that have misruled the country for more than four decades.

“The newspapers and TVs say everyone who is a patriot should vote ‘yes.’ The junta always uses the old ghost of neo-colonialism. But people aren’t scared of the old ghost. They’re only afraid of the juntas that have run the country down to the last place in the world.”

A Rangoon student cited the junta’s failed anti-American propaganda campaign in past years. “The junta ran a lot of anti-American stories in its media,” she said. “Then the Burmese people turned pro-American, not because people know much about the US but because people hate the junta.”

A government worker in Rangoon said, “If the junta just told people to vote on referendum day, it would be better for the junta. Now it’s very weird that we see their odd propaganda in newspapers and TV.”

Htay Aung, a Burmese political analyst, cited a lesson in Burmese history—in the 1960 election, the military led by Gen Ne Win urged people to vote for the military-backed party, but people rejected that party.

“Now the military junta does the same thing again,” he said. “The junta’s current propaganda seems a challenge to the people. It’s human nature for people to think the opposite way.”

However, a Burma observer, Mikael Gravers of Aarus University in Denmark, took a more pessimistic view about the referendum’s outcome, saying, “The most important thing is not to create worries and conflicts over a yes or no vote, because there is no difference, and there will be no significant change in the power relations.”

Meanwhile, pro-democracy activists have been attacked and harassed by pro-junta thugs because of their opposition to the constitution. In early April, a leading human rights activist, Myint Aye, and a member of the National League for Democracy (NLD), Tin Yu, were separately attacked in Rangoon.

Last week, members of the NLD, Thi Han and Win Thein, were beaten by thugs with batons and another NLD member, Tin Win, was arrested for wearing “No” message on his T-shirt. Copies of an NLD statement urging people to vote against the constitution were seized by authorities in several locations.

Burmese embassies have told Burmese citizens who live abroad that they can vote absentee at embassies. Absentee voting is underway at Burmese embassies in South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Thailand and Malaysia. In Singapore, the Burmese embassy announced on Tuesday that only Burmese citizens in Singapore who have paid their Burmese taxes at the embassy may vote absentee.


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