According to state media, Myanmar’s military-run election commission has declared that the party of ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi would be disbanded for failing to re-register in accordance with the country’s new electoral rules.
According to Myawaddy TV’s evening report on Tuesday, the National League for Democracy (NLD) party was one of 40 political groups that missed the deadline set by the governing military to register for an election.
Prior to the elections it has pledged to hold but which its detractors claim will not be free or fair, the military gave political parties two months in January to re-register in accordance with a rigorous new electoral legislation.
The NLD has declared that it would not participate in what it regards as a fraudulent election.
One of Suu Kyi’s party’s elected members, Bo Bo Oo, said on Tuesday, “We simply do not accept that an election would be held at a time when many political leaders and activists have been jailed and the people are being tortured by the military.”
The NLD has swept to victory in the nation’s parliamentary elections in November 2020. Aung San Suu Kyi was imprisoned by the army after a coup was staged less than three months later.
The Nobel laureate, 77, is currently serving a 33-year prison sentence after being found guilty in a string of politically motivated cases brought by the military. According to her admirers, the accusations were fabricated to prevent her from actively participating in politics.
Despite the fact that independent election monitors found no significant abnormalities, the army used widespread electoral fraud as justification for the coup.
Several detractors of Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who oversaw the coup and is now in charge of Myanmar, contend that he took action because the election foiled his own political aspirations.
The new polls have no defined date as of yet. The army’s own plans stated that they should arrive by the end of July.
However, the military unexpectedly extended its state of emergency by six months in February, extending the potential deadline for conducting elections.
Security, it stated, could not be guaranteed. Many portions of the country are not under military control, and there is fierce armed opposition to the military’s administration there.
20,000 people have been detained and more than 3,100 people have died since the coup, claims a local monitoring group.
As it launches significant offensives to crush the armed rebellion to its takeover of the government two years ago, the Myanmar military has been charged with killing people without provocation.
