KUALA LUMPUR: The European Union will not send observers to Myanmar's upcoming election, its top human rights official said today, dismissing the vote as neither free nor fair and urging South-East Asian nations to push for change.
EU commissioner Kasja Ollongren also said the 27-nation bloc would not send observers to oversee an election planned by Myanmar's government in late December, because the way it is being organised indicated it is "not free and fair".
Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing has touted the Dec 28 elections as a path to reconciliation in the civil war he sparked by snatching power in a 2021 coup.
But international monitors, including a UN expert and Amnesty International, have dismissed the vote as a ploy to legitimise continuing military rule.
"We're calling upon all neighbouring countries, including the Asean countries, to really firmly push for a change of course," said Ollongren.
"As long as Myanmar is unstable, as long as it's sort of a source of instability for the whole region, it should be the number one concern... for the Asean countries," she said in an interview in the Malaysian capital.
Ollongren's call comes ahead of a major Asean summit in Kuala Lumpur next week, where the issue of sending election observers to represent the 10-nation bloc is expected to be discussed.
Asean has been battling to implement a five-point plan, which calls, among other issues, for an immediate ceasefire.
Malaysia is this year's rotating chair of Asean – long derided by critics as a toothless talking shop – and calls at previous summits and meetings earlier for an end to fighting have yielded little effect.
Myanmar's vote will be blocked in huge enclaves of the country captured by an array of pro-democracy guerillas and long-active ethnic minority armies which have found common cause fighting the junta.
Naypyidaw has already conceded elections will not take place in one in seven national parliament constituencies, many of them active war zones, while martial law remains in place in one in five townships.
The planned vote was "not free and fair by the way it is being organised," Ollongren said.
"That means that we cannot recognise these as real elections, as fair."
"Therefore, based on these criteria, we will not send observers to something that we don't recognise as an election," she said. — AFP
