Sai Ai Pao is perhaps one of only a very few independent political figures in Burma who is confident of success in the country’s rare and controversial elections expected later this year.

As a prominent ethnic Shan leader, the 65-year-old believes his party can count on the support of the vast majority of voters in Shan State in eastern Burma in the country’s first poll in two decades.

Such were his hopes for winning control of a newly-created regional parliament that he decided to return to politics after 14 years, forming the new Shan Nationalities Democratic Party (SNDP) to contest the vote.

While critics have dismissed the election as a sham aimed at shoring up the ruling junta’s power, Sai Ai Pao said the SNDP has chosen to trust the military regime.

“The government has announced that it will hold free and fair elections and we believe and expect this,” he told AFP.

“I cannot guarantee it will completely happen. We just hope, that’s why we are planning to participate.”

The SNDP, widely known as the White Tiger party, believes it is supported by 90 per cent of Shan State’s six million people, which will have its own parliament along with other states following the election.

Shan are the second largest population — after the more than 30 million Burmese that dominate the ruling regime — in a country that has long struggled with tensions and separatist movements among disparate ethnic groups.

Sai Ai Pao was previously a senior member of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), which emerged as the second biggest party in the country’s last elections in 1990, with 23 seats.

It was the vote that saw Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) achieve a landslide victory — but the generals never permitted the party to take power.

Suu Kyi has spent much of the last two decades in jail or under house arrest and is barred from standing in the polls because she is a serving prisoner.

The NLD is boycotting the vote because the junta’s rules would have effectively forced it to expel Suu Kyi and other members in prison before it could participate. It has since been forcibly disbanded by the ruling generals.

With the NLD out of the picture, the SNDP still has to contest with a formidable opponent — the pro-junta Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

“Our rival party in the 1990 election was the NLD, but the USDP is our rival now. They are the powerful party, but if the election is free and fair, we will win with a majority in Shan State,” Sai Ai Pao said.

He said he hoped the parliaments created in this election will be able to work to create a democratic nation, despite the fact that the 2008 constitution that comes into force with the vote hands 25 per cent of the legislature to the military.

“We assume that the military is now ruling the country with 100 per cent,” he said. “In the future, civilians will participate in the administration with 75 per cent — and isn’t getting 75 per cent better than nothing?”

Sai Ai Pao is used to negotiating with the regime from within the approved political structure, attending the national convention off and on from 1993 to 1996, when he retired from politics due to health reasons.

The SNDP, which includes former SNLD members, is attempting to smooth its path into power by avoiding confrontation with the military and other parties.

“We also do not want undisciplined democracy immediately, it’s better to go step by step gradually,” Sai Ai Pao said.

But despite this appeasement the party has not been immune to the difficulties that have beset those attempting to contest the polls because of government rules to inhibit political campaigning.

The party intends to lodge a complaint with the authorities in the administrative capital Naypyidaw over travel restrictions imposed on a trip in July in Kayah State, where members were barred from entering a town.

Sai Ai Pao, who lives in a rural mountainous area, believes agriculture is crucial to the economic future of Burma, where 70 per cent of the 57 million population live in the countryside.

He wants a market-driven future and appeared to push for greater openness — a key issue in a country where critics accuse the junta of handing lucrative business interests to its cronies.

“There should not be nepotism in the economy, all should be equal and transparent,” he said.