Jailed ex-leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party ordered dissolved in military-ruled Myanmar
BANGKOK — The political party led by Myanmar’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi was ordered dissolved by the military-appointed election commission on Tuesday because it failed to register for a planned general election, state television station MRTV reported.
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, which has denounced the election as a sham, was one of 40 parties that failed to meet Tuesday’s deadline for registration, MRTV said.
Critics say the still-unscheduled election will be neither free nor fair in a country that is ruled by the military and has shut down free media and arrested most of the leaders of Suu Kyi’s party. The NLD won a landslide victory in the November 2020 election, only to have the army block all elected lawmakers from taking their seats in Parliament and seize power for itself, while detaining top members of Suu Kyi’s government and party.
“We absolutely do not accept that an election will be held at a time when many political leaders and political activists have been arrested and the people are being tortured by the military,” Bo Bo Oo, one of the elected lawmakers from Suu Kyi’s party, said Tuesday.
Suu Kyi, 77, is serving prison sentences totaling 33 years after being convicted in a series of politically tainted prosecutions brought by the military. Her supporters say the charges were contrived to prevent her from participating in politics.
The army said it staged its 2021 takeover because of massive electoral fraud, though independent observers did not find major irregularities. Critics of Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who led the takeover and now serves as Myanmar’s leader, believe he acted because the vote thwarted his political ambitions.
The new election was initially expected to take place by the end of July, according to the army’s plans. But in February, the military announced a six-month extension of its state of emergency, possibly delaying the vote, saying security could not be assured. The military does not control large swaths of the country, and it faces widespread armed resistance to its rule.
The army takeover in Myanmar a year ago unexpectedly aborted the ongoing restoration of representative democracy in the Southeast Asian country.
“Amid the state oppression following the 2021 coup, no election can be credible, especially when much of the population sees a vote as a cynical attempt to supplant the landslide victory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy in 2020,” said a report issued Tuesday by the Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group. “The polls will almost certainly intensify the post-coup conflict, as the regime seeks to force them through and resistance groups seek to disrupt them.”
The military government in January enacted a political party registration law that makes it difficult for opposition groups to mount a serious challenge to the army’s favored candidates. The law sets conditions such as minimum levels of membership, candidates and offices that would be difficult to meet for any party that lacks the backing of the army and its cronies, especially in the repressive current political atmosphere.
The detentions come after days of escalating tension between Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy and Myanmar’s powerful military.
The new law declared that existing parties had to reapply with the election commission within 60 days — by March 28 — and those that failed to do so would be automatically invalidated” and considered dissolved. Parties have to entrust their properties to the government if they are dissolved by their own choice or if their registrations are canceled under the law.
The National League for Democracy rejected the law, saying the military-planned elections are illegal and a “sham.” It declared that any individuals and entities cooperating with the military in the polls will be deemed accomplices in committing high treason.
Bo Bo Oo said a March 21 meeting of the party’s Central Working Committee reaffirmed the decision not to register.
There were more than 90 registered parties in the 2020 general election.
U_S_ officials say the Biden administration intends to declare that Myanmar’s years-long repression of the Rohingya Muslim population is a “genocide.”
MRTV said 63 applied to the election commission for registration this year:12 at the national level and 51 at regional or state levels. The commission must still approve the applications.
The National League for Democracy was founded in 1988, in the wake of a failed uprising against military rule, and won a 1990 general election that was invalidated by military rulers in Myanmar, also known as Burma. The party was technically banned after it boycotted a 2010 election held under military auspices but was allowed to register when it agreed to run in 2011. It took power after a landslide victory in the 2015 general election.
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