Burma: You call that an election?

In "Why Is Burma Holding an Election?" Slates reflects on the upcoming so-called "election" in Burma:

"As predictable as Burma's election outcome might be, it is likely to attract considerable international press coverage. The last time Burmese politics made headlines, in 2007, thousands of monks were swarming into the streets of Rangoon, the country's largest city and former capital. The mass protests, which snowballed into the weeklong "saffron revolution," were put down with brutal force by the country's military junta, which bludgeoned and gunned down dozens of unarmed protestors, including a Japanese photojournalist.

Now, three years on, the government is seeking a mandate at the ballot box. Why, after 48 years of autocratic misrule, are Burma's military rulers holding elections?

One thing is clear: The junta is less interested in establishing a true democracy than in making a bid for international legitimacy and buying off dissent with cosmetic reforms. The junta's three-front war—against the pro-democracy movement, ethnic minority unrest, and international opprobrium—could all be advanced, if only marginally, by a stamp of democratic legitimacy."

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