Myanmar’s pro-junta parties field army of candidates

YANGON - Myanmar’s two pro-junta parties have submitted large candidate lists for the country’s Nov 7 general election, dwarfing the number of pro-democracy candidates, party sources said Tuesday.

Parties had to submit their candidate lists to the election commission Monday to qualify for the Nov 7 polls, Myanmar’s first in two decades.

The pro-junta Union Solidarity Development Party, whose membership is packed with retired military men, will field 1,163 candidates, enough to fight all contested seats in the lower, upper and regional houses of parliament.

Another pro-government party, the National Unity Party, has registered 994 candidates, the party’s executive committee member Han Shwe said.

Myanmar’s two main pro-democracy parties, the National Democratic Force and Democratic Party Myanmar (DPM), have only registered 160 and 49 candidates, respectively.

“We could only register 49 candidates because of a lack of money,” DPM chief general secretary Than Than Nu told DPA.

Parties have complained about the election commission’s registration fee of $500 per candidate, a considerable amount in a country where the annual per capita income is less than $600 and the monthly minimum wage is about $30.

The parties have also complained of a lack of time to prepare for the polls. The election date was only announced Aug 13.

Only 42 parties have qualified to contest the election, and the election commission, set up by the military regime, is expected to reject several of the registered candidates.

Election regulations passed earlier this year effectively forced Myanmar’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), to withdraw from the election contest.

The rules stipulated that political parties could not include prisoners among their members. The NLD is led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who is currently serving an 18-month jail term which is expected to expire a week after the polls.

In Myanmar’s last election, held in 1990, the NLD won 392 of the contested 485 seats. Some 93 parties ran in that election, the first democratic polls in the country since 1962, when General Ne Win toppled elected premier U Nu in a coup.

Myanmar’s junta has prevented the NLD from taking power for the past two decades. A new constitution ensures that even if a pro-democracy party wins the Nov 7 polls, the military will be able to block legislation through the Senate, a quarter of which is appointed by the junta.