The other side of parliamentarism: Myanmar experience

Parliamentarianism, as well as the principle of free will of the people, is one of the basic foundations of a democratic society. However, not everywhere and not always parliamentarism takes root. In a number of societies that are just beginning the transition to democracy, parliamentarism often turns into its opposite - not delegating state powers to their elected officials, but imposing on the people the power of those who gain control over parliament, using “dirty” methods of preelection campaigning and other, more sophisticated electoral technology. Exactly such a situation occurred in Myanmar in 2020, where the pro-American ruling party came to power again after the parliamentary elections organized with alleged procedural violations, which became the reason for a coup d'etat. It is argued that the change of power in Naypyidaw on February 1,2021 was aimed at amending electoral system in Myanmar, giving more opportunities to pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and smaller regional parties to achieve a better result at the next parliamentary elections. To a large extent, electoral victories of the National League for Democracy (NLD) were facilitated by the system of voting in one round in single-mandate constituencies (known as “first past the post”), inherited from the times of British colonial rule, in which the winner needed to get mere 20-30% of the votes in his district, provided that the rest of the votes were distributed among the competing parties. Holding of new free and fair elections based on a more honest proportional electoral system and the subsequent transfer of state powers to the party that won them were included in the Five-Point Road Map, which became the political program of the State Administration Council (SAC) of Myanmar for the near future.