Brigadier General Ohm Myint in a meeting tried to persuade Mon villagers to cast their votes in the 2010 general elections to legitimize the rule of Burma’s military government.

The meeting took place on June 8 in Naing-praing village, Mudon Township, Mon State. In attendance were about 1,000 people, many villagers coerced by the Village Peace and Development Council (VPDC).

A resident who attended the two-hour meeting dictated to an IMNA field reporter the content of Ohm Myint’s speech:

“This election will not be held as usual. It is not easy to hold elections in this country. So you all should think very carefully before you vote. Do not think wrong and vote for their [opposition parties] government when the election comes.”

This was Ohm Myint’s third visit to Mon State this year. Many residents recall well the General’s Burmese troops burning down the Halockhanee refugee camp in 1994 as well as the Baleh-donephai village.

According to the resident, Ohm Myint also said that Mon villages have become much more developed since he was a child. A presenter from the SPDC’s Women’s Affairs Department echoed this sentiment: when compared to the past, she said, Mon state has become developed [because of the government’s administration] and peaceful, as there is no war.

Another resident told IMNA that afterwards, apparently pleased with her presentation, “Brigadier General Ohm Myint gave 100,000 kyat to this woman.”

Officials in Burma’s capital city, Naypyidaw, put Brigadier General Ohm Myint, in charge of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) in Mon State in 2008. According to an IMNA source within the Mon State USDA, though the move is yet to be announced by the Burmese military government, that he (Ohm Myint) will take responsibility for the group’s participation in the ensuing elections.