After months of waiting the Burmese military government announced it would hold the country's first elections since 1990 on Nov 7 this year. The announcement was made on government radio and television stations, and it gave political parties until the end of this month to submit their candidate lists.
Absolutely no one believes the election process will be free or fair, but there is still debate on whether they might advance the cause of democratisation in the country, however incrementally. The leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and other NLD leaders have, not surprisingly, taken a principled stand and called for a boycott of the election. The NLD was formally dissolved by the government after it failed to register for the electoral process on May 6.
A breakaway faction of the NLD _ the National Democratic Force _ did receive a permit to field candidates in July, however.
The leader of the NDF, Khin Maung Swe, has said the new party will continue the struggle for democracy, but he gave no policy details.
The division within the NLD reflects a wider split in opinion among pundits, political analysts and pro-democracy leaders outside Burma on whether the highly restricted elections can have any value in bringing much-needed change. It is difficult to know for certain because Burma is such a closed society, but it is likely that this question is also foremost in the minds of the Burmese general public.
As the critics claim, the framework of the electoral process has been carefully tailored to legitimise the military rule under a new guise of civilian rule.
Fully one-quarter of the 440 parliamentary seats will be reserved outright for members of the military. Many of the remaining candidates are recently ''retired'' military officers, including the prime minister and 22 other ministers who left their military posts in April.
Moreover, the junta-written constitution calls for the creation of a National Defence and Security Council to be controlled by the military commander in chief, now General Than Shwe, which will have the power to overrule the ''civilian'' government.
If all this isn't enough, it is clear that newly formed parties that toe the military line are being given resources and special privileges, while those that don't are facing severe restrictions.
This includes pro-democracy parties as well as parties formed to advance the agendas of the many ethnic groups in the country.
And then there are the election laws which bar the candidacy of Mrs Suu Kyi and some 2,000 more political prisoners.
Given all these intentional obstacles to free and fair elections in Burma, it would seem that Mrs Suu Kyi and the rest of the NLD faithful are probably correct in choosing to boycott rather than participate in the charade. That leaves the question of what, if anything, can be done to bring about progress in democratisation and, perhaps even more importantly, respect for the principles of human rights. The answer remains that until the international community acts together to put direct pressure on the Burmese military government through its primary sources of funding it will be very difficult to bring about change from within.
As a member of Asean, Thailand has lately been more vocal in urging free and fair elections in Burma. Yet the state-owned PTT Exploration and Production recently announced its plans to enter a project with Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise to develop five petroleum fields in the Gulf of Martaban off Burma. There are also plans for a Thai-Burmese initiative to build a deep-sea port at Dawei (Tavoy).
Meanwhile, successive US governments have had strong criticism for the Burmese junta and imposed broad sanctions, yet the operations of the US-based Chevron Corporation, which provide a major source of revenue for the junta, always somehow escape notice.
In late July Gen Than Shwe ended a five-day visit to India in which he signed several pacts to boost economic cooperation between the two countries. These are just a few areas where members of the international community could place principles above profitability and use their economic leverage to nudge Burma toward real change.