Photo: Flickr / Axel Drainville
Photo: Flickr / Axel Drainville

The stubborn regime

2015 elections in Burma will be neither historic nor consequential.
Published on

In mid-July on BBC, Myanmar's Commander-in-Chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing said confidently that he "expects a free and fair election" sponsored by his military scheduled for November this year, and will honour the electoral results. The BBC hailed not only the general's pro-democracy pledge, labelling this year's polls "historic", but also the very fact that the country's most powerful soldier – generals in Myanmar are traditionally media-shy – sat down with the BBC for an interview.

Sitting across from a row of microphones in the BBC's London studio, the World Service Newsday's presenter Clare McDonnell asked me what I thought of the general's promise and his unprecedented interview to the BBC. My answer: the generals are getting PR-wise.

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Himal Southasian
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