Myanmar’s NLD wins election but loses fight against disinformation
Myanmar’s NLD wins election but loses fight against disinformation
WRITTEN BY HUNTER MARSTON
10 November 2020
Aung San Suu Kyi has won another resounding victory in Myanmar’s November general election. However, the elections also underscored the country’s fractious ethnic, religious, and partisan divides. In the weeks and months leading up to the election, Myanmar saw a flurry of disinformation and fake news proliferate online. Rather than formulate a response to refute conspiracy theories and personal attacks however, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and the ruling National League for Democracy’s (NLD) selective response to disinformation has only deepened the seeds of division and suspicion within Myanmar.
The process was heavily flawed from the beginning. The Union Election Commission (UEC) disqualified numerous Rohingya candidates on dubious claims of being unable to prove their citizenship. This is just the latest form of discrimination faced by the minority Muslim group which has suffered brutal repression by Myanmar’s armed forces (the Tatmadaw). The campaign period also saw a fake news site calling itself Radio Free Myanmar (taking a cue from widely respected Radio Free Asia) peddle claims that the NLD was working with Rohingya activists and ‘using COVID-19 as a weapon’.
An independent electoral commission?
The NLD’s opponents also sought to portray the UEC as partisan and unable to administer free and fair elections. Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing questioned the independence of the election commission and implied in an interview that the military may not accept the results of the election if there were doubts it was free and fair. Government spokesperson Zaw Htay pushed back on Min Aung Hlaing’s claims, asserting, “Rather than being supportive for the success of the election, issuing such statements will create fear and could potentially lead to instability”.
The NLD failed to set clear policies to deal with misinformation or the deliberate spreading of misleading information. Worse, it has targeted journalists and critics of the government for speaking out, while it did nothing to challenge military-linked opponents who spread misinformation.
These attacks are not entirely divorced from reality. However, as Khin Zaw Win, the director of the Tampadipa Institute, a public policy organisation in Yangon, argued, “The UEC is virtually an extension of the NLD and is not considered the independent, non-partisan body it should be”. The fact that the NLD appoints election commissioners may explain why many voters see the UEC as answering to the ruling party.
According to a survey by the People’s Alliance for Credible Elections (PACE), an election monitoring organisation in Myanmar, only 51 per cent of respondents said that they trust the election commission (which oversees voter lists), decides which candidate are eligible for office, and administers polling stations around the country. Confidence in government institutions, including the UEC, is even lower in ethnic minority states compared to central Myanmar where people overwhelmingly support the NLD. 79 per cent of respondents reported trust in State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.
While the UEC urged political candidates not to spread potentially misleading information ahead of the election, it made it rather easy to attack its credibility and independence by censoring certain parties’ speeches and cancelling voting in the majority of northern Rakhine State, where there is little support for the NLD, while allowing voting to take place in southern Rakhine where the NLD is more popular.
The NLD also failed to set clear policies to deal with misinformation or the deliberate spreading of misleading information. Worse, it has targeted journalists and critics of the government for speaking out, while it did nothing to challenge military-linked opponents who spread misinformation in an attempt to undermine support for Aung San Suu Kyi or disrupt the democratic process. These self-serving inconsistencies exacerbated existing uncertainties surrounding the election and already toxic identity politics based on race and religion.
For example, the government blocked activists websites and genuine news sites in Rakhine for allegedly spreading ‘fake news’, and pursued charges against several ethnic media groups. But Aung San Suu Kyi has declined to speak out against her critics in Myanmar’s powerful military, despite Facebook’s announcement in October that linked ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’ to the military.
For Myanmar, social media — friend or foe?
Facebook has repeatedly declared that it is winning the fight against disinformation and hate speech in Myanmar. As Rafael Frankel, Facebook’s director for public policy, told The Economist, “we’re basically at near-historic lows for hate speech on the platform in Myanmar” as a result of Facebook’s recent election-related policy tweaks to reduce and flag harmful content. In fact, Facebook reported that it had removed 280,000 instances of harmful content in the second quarter of 2020 alone, over five times the level removed in the first quarter of the year. Yet, rather than painting a picture of assurance, those figures indicate a surge in election-related disinformation—and underscored the inability of social media monitors to eradicate the tidal wave of dangerous posts online.
Facebook secured its dominance in Myanmar’s online information ecosystem in 2016 with the launch of its Free Basics program, which ensured that the country’s rapidly expanding number of mobile phone users could access Facebook free of data charges. When it encountered criticism for its role in triggering the hate speech and conflict which ultimately led to the military’s campaign of atrocities against Rohingya minorities in Rakhine State and surging Bamar nationalism across the country, Facebook quietly withdrew the Free Basics program in 2017.
This reaction fits a pattern among social media companies’ slow response to the proliferation of disinformation on their platforms. According to one digital rights activist in Myanmar, Mal Khin, it took YouTube “at least 4-5 days” to remove a number of videos pushing George Soros conspiracy theories. Many people continue to share misinformation and deliberately misleading content via social media platforms such as WhatsApp despite acknowledging that they don’t really trust everything they see online.
A legacy of mistrust
In fact, a majority of respondents to the PACE survey mentioned earlier reported that they have no confidence in Facebook. Many of Myanmar’s people who came of age during the military junta, when independent media was essentially nonexistent and illegal, became inured to state propaganda and thus remain suspicious of mainstream media. For many, Facebook conveniently filled that information void. According to The Economist, Facebook is now the primary source of news for two out of every five users in Myanmar.
Rather than instil faith in an independent press and combat fake news on social media, the NLD has actively encouraged disinformation against its opponents and Muslims in particular, and it has tolerated pro-military nationalist content when it suits its political purposes. Ultimately, the NLD may find that such tactics backfire by fostering a climate of conspiracy theories and low trust in government institutions. While confidence in Aung San Suu Kyi remains high, as this weekend’s polls made clear, a well-informed and democratic society that respect the rights of a free press would better protect civilian governance and moderate violent divisions.
While it’s unlikely Suu Kyi will be voted out of office (at 75 she is not expected to run again in 2025), she may find that exploiting nationalism and populism comes at a price. For now, while the NLD has won the election it may have lost the peace.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Hunter Marston is a PhD candidate in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs Department of International Relations at the Australian National University and has written about Southeast Asia in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Image credit: Judithbluepool/Flickr