A Workshop on tackling disinformation and hate speech in Myanmar: empowering women candidates for 2020 Elections was held, yesterday, at the Grand Amara Hotel, Nay Pyi Taw. Chairman of Union Election Commission (UEC) U Hla Thein delivered an opening remark at the event.
The workshop was jointly conducted by the UEC, International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and National Democratic Institute (IDI) and which was attended by members of UEC, Hluttaw representatives, women Hluttaw representatives, members of relevant regions/states UEC sub-commissions, election officials, director-general of commission office, office staff, representatives from the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, political parties, CSOs and INGOs.
In his opening remarks at the event, UEC Chairman U Hla Thein said that the 2020 Election would be held with applying a five-point standards.
When it came to the time of election campaign, it was needed to avoid spreading hate speech and disinformation among one another. It was learnt that there was no complaints in the previous election although there remained the use of hate speech.
In conformity with all the political parties, Code of Conduct for Political Parties and Candidates had been set up on 15 May, 2015. Moreover, promises were kept to avoid defamation, criticizing, wrongful and groundless accusations, and discrimination of religion, race and similar abuses among the parties. The UEC has been making an attempt to draw up a grand strategy for 2019-2020 and which aimed at empowering the women, ethnic races and invalids while taking into account of dealing with all stakeholders.
There had been a total of 6,038 election candidates from 91 political parties in the 2015 General Election. Out of 793 women election candidates, there were some 151 women candidates who won the election. When it came to assigning the duties to the poll masters and their teams, efforts had been made to empower the role of women. Then attendees took part in the discussion and they discussed effective ways to combat the hate speech and misinformation, gender equality in the elections and women empowerment issues, it was learnt. — MNA (Translated by Win Ko Ko Aung)
