takes place on military premises with little or no scrutiny. We hope this may be addressed in the future to further strengthen the trust of the Myanmar public in electoral processes. Continued Malapportionment & Disenfranchisement One aspect of Myanmar’s electoral system that ANFREL has long expressed concerns about is the constituency boundaries following administrative units and disregarding population distribution. Because constituencies for the Pyithu Hluttaw and region/state hluttaws are based on the country’s 330 townships, which vary widely in population, some voters effectively have more weight than others. According to the latest census data, the smallest township in Myanmar is Kachin state’s Injangyang with only 1,732 inhabitants 95, while the largest is Bago township with 491,434 96. Yet, both elect one Pyithu Hluttaw MP and two MPs for their respective state/region parliament. This imbalance and the unfair allocation of elected representatives, also known as malapportionment, undermines the principle of equal suffrage affirmed in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The issue also exists, although on a smaller scale, with Amyotha Hluttaw constituencies, since Myanmar made the political decision to provide each state or region, regardless of their population, with equal representation in the upper house of Parliament, as other countries do. While Myanmar has the sovereign right to adopt the electoral system of its choice, ANFREL reiterates its earlier calls for a more equitable delimitation of constituencies in order to increase the fairness of elections and representativity of legislative bodies. Another unfortunate feature of the legal framework for elections is the entrenched disenfranchisement of large sectors of the population. First, Article 392(a) of the Constitution disenfranchises all members of religious orders, whose numbers are considerable: the Buddhist clergy alone accounts for well over half a million people 97. Christian and Hindu priests or nuns are also unable to vote, but not Muslim imams 98, a loophole which causes resentment among nationalists. ANFREL respects the cultural and religious traditions that serve as the basis for excluding the clergy from the electorate. However, we believe there is enough space in a modern democracy to allow members of religious orders to exercise their universal suffrage as private citizens, which would contribute to making elections more inclusive and representative. Another group that is disenfranchised in Myanmar is of course the Rohingya. Long discriminated against by Myanmar’s draconian citizenship laws, most Rohingya do not hold full citizenship and identification papers. In 2010, those who were in possession of temporary identity papers known as “white cards” were allowed to vote by the then-military government, a move widely described as politically motivated to balance the votes of the Rakhine ethnic minority. In 2015, a similar attempt to enfranchise Rohingya was quickly thwarted by pressure from Buddhist nationalists 99. 95 http://www.themimu.info/sites/themimu.info/files/documents/BaselineData_Census_Dataset_Township_MIMU _16Jun2016_ENG.xlsx 96 The largest township in Myanmar was previously Hlaingtharya in Yangon region, until it was separated into two in 2019. 97 In 2016, there were 282,347 Buddhist monks, 252,962 novices, and 60,390 nuns in Myanmar. See http://www.mahana.org.mm/en/religious-affairs/the-account-of-wazo-monks-and-nuns-in-1377-2016-year/ 98 Articles 2(i) of the Pyithu Hluttaw Election Law, Amyotha Hluttaw Election Law, and Region or State Hluttaw Election Law 99 https://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/12/asia/myanmar-rohingya-voting-rights/index.html 34