By Yeni
Whenever someone says that Burma's Nov. 7 election will bring about future political change, I am prompted to respond using the following words of Amartya Sen, the Indian Noble Prize winning economist:
“Nothing perhaps is more important right now, as the day of the phony electoral event approaches, than global public discussion of the real nature of the forthcoming electoral fraud. The expressions of pious hope that things can change after the election are totally contrary to reasoned analysis about what's going on in Burma," Sen said in his keynote address to the conference “A Return to Civilian Rule?The Prospects for Democracy and Rights in Burma After the Election,” organized jointly by the Johns Hopkins Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and Human Rights Watch.
Whenever someone says that Burma's Nov. 7 election will bring about future political change, I am prompted to respond using the following words of Amartya Sen, the Indian Noble Prize winning economist:
| Yeni is news editor of the Irrawaddy magazine. He can be reached at yeni@irrawaddy.org. |

