Communists Assured Landslide Win in Laos

04/30/2006

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Laotians voted for a new parliament Sunday in a largely symbolic exercise since all the candidates belonged to the communist party. But in an effort to bring in fresh faces, only about a quarter were incumbents.

About 175 candidates from the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party competed for 115 seats.

“Laos has organized a peaceful, free and fair election and our aim is to have 100 percent of eligible voters exercise their right” to vote, Lao Foreign Ministry Spokesman Yong Chanthalansy told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

“If there are some voters who don’t cast their vote, hours at the polling station will be extended and the community leaders will ask them to vote,” he added.

The leadership of the single-party state - one of five remaining communist countries in the world - has long been dominated by aging members of the party who participated in the civil war against a U.S.-backed regime that ended with a communist victory in 1975.

Along with the new faces on the ballot, nine of the candidates are company directors, indicating the wholesale acceptance of private enterprise in a country that once tightly controlled all commercial activity.

The government of Laos - a poor, Southeast Asian country of about 6.2 million people - has partially liberalized the economy to encourage development, but has kept a tight grip on political power. Its leaders are among the most secretive in Asia, tolerating no opposition and maintaining strict control over the media.

The country’s last elections were in February 2002, and the assembly would normally serve a five-year term but was restricted to four years this time because the session before ran an extra year.

Laos allowed independent candidates to run for the first time in 2002. The only independent in that race was Justice Minister Khamouane Boupha, who won.

Western observers expect the party to retain tight control over the country in the near future, noting that its 8th Party Congress ended in March with a commitment to maintain the status quo.