bout de papier, Vol. 29, No. 4 (2016), pp. 10–13
Note de la rédaction: C’est en lisant le livre de John Graham, Who’s Man in Havana, dans lequel il raconte, entre autre, sa participation à des missions d’observation électorales que l’équipe de bout de papier a eu l’idée de demander à nos collègues FS de partager leurs récentes expériences à ce sujet. Jade Puddington et Alex Johnston ont répondu à l’appel et nous racontent dans les pages suivantes leurs expériences respectives au Myanmar (Birmanie) et au Mali.
I knew when I joined the Foreign Service that I would get to have innumerable adventures and unique experiences, but never could I have imagined that five years only after joining the Department, I would be sitting on a plastic chair in a one-room school house with a rusty metal roof, watching votes being counted in one of the most important Burmese elections in over half a century.
I had arrived in Yangon, the capital of Burma, a week before national elections were slated to take place on November 8, 2015. I had visited the city two years earlier and while much had stayed the same, much had also changed. Yangon is a bustling city brimming with history and a desire to move forward. Golden pagodas stand in the middle of busy traffic circles brightly illuminated by spotlights. British colonial buildings, wrapped in ivy and moss, stand adjacent to scaffolding which will give birth to skyrises. The air is hot and the humidity high. As night descends on the city, streets tend to be more dark than light, but that doesn’t stop lively street vendors from setting up to sell their wares – from fruits, to cell phones, to skewers of food cooked in pots of oil.
I had been sent to Burma from Ottawa to help our embassy with reporting in the lead up to the elections, and to be there for the event itself to act as an election monitor. This was arguably the first opportunity for the citizens of Burma to participate in a free and fair election in over 25 years, and you could sense an enthusiasm in the city – something reflected across the country as well. Bubbling under the optimism though, was an anxiousness brought on by uncertainty of how events would unfold.
For an entire generation, it would be the first opportunity to truly go to the polls. In 1990, somewhat free elections had been held – during which opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) had won a majority. However, the military refused to accept the results and instead put her under house arrest. Burma had essentially been a military dictatorship for 60 years until 2010, when the military again allowed elections and this time, a semi-civilian government to come into power. Since those 2010 elections, Burma had undergone significant changes in moving from a military dictatorship to a fledgling democratic regime, and the outside world had taken notice. This election would be a true test of that commitment to democracy. Would this be a repeat of 1990? Would there be violence? While everyone hoped for the best, the worst case scenario hovered in people’s subconscious.
Throughout the democratic changes which had been taking place, the Burmese government had been remarkably open to receiving advice and support from the international community. It was equally determined to show its commitment to the democratic transition, and was making the process for its 2015 national elections as open as possible. This included allowing countries and international organizations to send observer groups to monitor these elections. Determined to have Canada play a role, our Ambassador had all members of the embassy accredited as official observers, as well as myself and a colleague from our mission in Bangkok. We would have seven teams of two (one Canada Based Staff (CBS), one Locally Engaged Staff (LES)), each of them with a car and driver.
The day before the elections, our teams began spreading across the country. One took the overnight bus to Pa’an and would coordinate with the Thai observers. Two CBS embedded with the European mission left with their EU counterparts for Mon State. The Ambassador drove to the delta region. As for me, like those remaining, I would start my adventure before sunrise on the day of elections. In total, the teams would cover a diversity of areas, from largely Muslim, to ethnic Bamar, from poor, to urban, to rural, to military.
My car and driver picked me up at the hotel at 5:30 am so that I could meet Lwin Mar, the LES with whom I was paired, at her polling station. While she was waiting to vote (the Ambassador ensured that all embassy LES had the opportunity to do so), I would be inside observing the station. It was a bit of a surreal feeling walking into the hotel lobby at that early hour. The lobby was abuzz with people. In the days leading up to the elections, a number of new groups had arrived in the hotel – a surprising amount were tourists but most were election observers from the Carter Center, easily identifiable with their matching satchels and blue shirts. That morning they were all preparing to head out. The hotel lobby counter was stacked high with boxed breakfasts, ready to go.
Driving along in the pre-dawn, the city was already moving hazily. Joggers were out running around the park before the arrival of daylight temperatures. Under one of the flyovers, highlighted by fluorescent lights, workers were crouching and assembling newspapers. People walked along the sidewalks in their traditional longiis and flip flops. After half an hour, we pulled off the main road into the smaller side streets of Yangon. It is hard to describe the side roads of this city. Most times they are only wide enough for one car, with the security walls of people’s properties stretching along their sides. They snake and curl, often with people walking their edges. If you follow them long enough, they will pop you out at another main road. How drivers and taxis know their way around is a mystery, but they instinctively know the roads to follow… well, except this time.
We weren’t exactly sure where the station was located and had to stop a few times to ask for directions. A vendor on the street corner, a security guard walking in front of a gate – all pointed us in the general direction we had to go. We finally parked and the driver motioned me down the rough dirt road. I rounded the corner to find an area cordoned off on one side with plastic tape. A line of at least 200 people had already formed at the small shrine which was doubling up as a polling station. I walked its length and received smiles and nods. With my green accreditation card hanging from my neck, they knew I was one of thousands of observers in the country to ensure the elections went well. I walked back to the entrance of the shrine, past many dressed in attire fit for a celebration. As soon as I showed my pass, I was allowed entry (minus my shoes and socks). There were already three local observers in the area designated for monitors. I joined them and received a rundown of what had happened so far. The elections had started smoothly.
Voters would enter the building a few at a time, proceed to the first table to present their voting slips and receive their first ballot for the national parliament. They would go behind cardboard shields to mark their selection, fold the paper and put it into the ballot box themselves. They would then continue to another table and go through a similar process for the regional vote and, if they were part of an ethnic group, repeat the process a third time for an ethnic vote. Before leaving, they had to have their pinkie finger dipped in ink to clearly indicate they had had their opportunity to vote. [You may ask how much ink is required to mark the fingers of voters at Voter casting her ballot.
50,000 polling stations… as the Ambassador found out, $2 million. Yet this simple act ensured individuals could not fraudulently vote twice, adding greater legitimacy to the election results]. After my LES partner had finished voting, we stayed another half hour before beginning to make our way to Bago, a city an hour and a half away.
Just before reaching Bago, we pulled off to the side of the road along a white concrete wall. It was one of the military barracks. The government had said that all locations, even the barracks, would be open for monitors, and so we were determined to test that accessibility. After a conversation with the guard at the gate we were allowed on the compound. Our IDs were photographed and we were then ushered down a dirt road with our car. We finally pulled up to a school house where a white SUV was parked outside. Contrary to the first polling station, there was no line up here. We walked inside where two American observers had arrived five minutes before us – a testament to the sheer number of observers circulating. According to the teachers who were acting as election officials, they were only waiting for one more person to arrive for everyone on their list to have voted. It was only 10am and the station was set to stay open until 4pm. This could be a long wait. The Americans decided to try and go to a different polling station while we opted to wait a little longer. If the vote was completed, we would be able to watch vote counting. The teachers offered us tea and snacks as the minutes ticked by. Lwin Mar and I made a deal – another 20 minutes and then we would leave for another station. As luck would have it, the remaining voter arrived and our wait was not in vain.
Counting was a slow process. At that station, they had had 200 voters. It took at least three hours to count everything. The advanced national ballots, cast in the days before the elections, were the first to be tallied. Each envelope was opened, the ballot examined, shown to those watching and the name of the party selected, announced. The same process was followed for the votes which had just been cast, with all ballots for the same party placed in individual laundry baskets. The votes were counted, bundled together and the overall winner, revealed. The same process was followed for the regional votes as well as the ethnic. We sat in our plastic chairs; a soldier watched through the open window shutters.
The humidity and 30-degree heat hung heavily in the air. Once the process completed, everything was sealed in bags and loaded into the back of a pick-up truck to be taken to the regional centre in Bago. We hopped in our car and followed. The truck, containing two election officials and two security officers, drove along the highway in the hot sunshine, all the way to a small compound where the votes from the overall region were being collected.
To wrap the day, Lwin Mar and I travelled back to her polling station to observe the counting there too. People were watching through the grates that formed walls on one side of the shrine. Inside, there were observers from the public, representatives from the parties, election monitors and the election officials. Each time a vote was to be rejected, it was challenged and discussed. The station had several hundred votes and the counting would go late into the night. This was to be a scene repeated across most urban areas. I headed back to the embassy to begin writing my reports. I received information from several of the other teams. One of the groups in Yangon who had gone to a station to watch the counting was being told that no one was allowed to leave until all the votes had been counted. Five hours later they finally made their way back to the embassy.
In the days following the elections, the international monitoring groups would all release their observations. Not only had election day gone smoothly, it had also gone better than anyone had even anticipated. The Union Election Committee began releasing information about vote counts at five regular times throughout the day. Once all was said and done, the opposition NLD party had won by a landslide. All sides appear to be taking the necessary steps to ensure a smooth transition of power and the start of the next chapter in Burma’s unfolding story.
What would my advice be for others taking part in election monitoring?
1. Be adaptable – The embassy actually lost all SIGNET and phone communications for a week in the lead up to the elections. The embassy staff didn’t panic though. They simply brought out the Wi-Fi hot spots.
2. Pack like you are going for a hike – You will be inside, outside, in areas with lots of amenities or no amenities at all. Be prepared for everything. Bring sun screen, bug spray, snacks, water, cell phone charger, toilet paper and anything else you think you might need.
3. It isn’t a day for bright colours – Watch what colours you wear on election day. You are meant to be non-partisan, and that means not wearing colours associated with any party running. Tan, black and white may be some of your best friends when out watching the polls.
4. Footwear – Take your cues from the locals. If you are going to be in and out of shrines, flip flops may be your footwear of choice.
5. Logistics – If you are starting early, get your logistics in order. Can you get where you need to go in the early hours of the morning? Do you need to book a car in advance? Stay with someone in town? Similarly, what about after elections are finished?
6. Talk to strangers – Chatting with people randomly can sometimes yield interesting results. Striking up a conversation with someone sitting beside me at breakfast, I met one of the long-term election monitors of the Carter Centre. Chatting with another gentleman in the elevator, I found out he was a camera man off to cover one of the many press conferences.
7. Training can take you only so far – Some members of the embassy participated in the training session offered by the US embassy as well as the EU monitoring mission, and subsequently trained the remainder of embassy staff. It was thorough and covered a lot of ground, but you can (and should) also trust your instincts. You have voted in elections before, you’ll know if something seems out of place.
8. Candle wax is very hot – After the votes had been tallied, the election officials were to seal the ballots into plastic bag and use candle wax to literally close and put a seal on the bags. Unfortunately, the wax was actually melting through them. A little ingenuity on the part of the teachers resulted in cloth ribbons being tied around the bags first and the wax seal being placed on that.
Jade Puddington grew up a child of a Foreign Service family. After university, she worked for DND before joining Foreign Affairs in 2010. Since then, she has worked in the International Crime and Terrorism Division, acted as a Media Liaison Officer at the G20, covered communications in the Emergency Management Bureau, and until recently was responsible for Cambodia, Burma and Laos in the Southeast Asia and Oceania Relations Division. She is currently in Mandarin language training.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 29, No. 4 (2016), pp. 10–13. Read the rest of this issue →
