Myanmar junta to allow Aung San Suu Kyi to vote

YANGON - Myanmar’s junta Friday allowed democracy-icon Aung San Suu Kyi to vote in the upcoming general election Nov 7, although it has barred her and her party from running.

The Election Commission listed Suu Kyi, as number 2,833 among eligible voters in her neighbourhood in Yangon. Suu Kyi has been under house detention since May 2003 at her family compound.

Her current term of house arrest is due to expire Nov 13, a week after the national general elections, the first to be held in military-run Myanmar for two decades.

“I don’t think she will be allowed to leave her house to vote, but officials may take the ballot to her,” said a government official who asked to remain anonymous.

Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which won the 1990 general election by a landslide, have called on their supporters to boycott this year’s polls after being effectively blocked from contesting them.

Two pro-government parties, the Union Solidarity Development Party (USDP), and National Unity Party (NUP), have fielded 1,163 and 990 candidates, respectively, about ten times as many the largest pro-democracy party.

“I regret that the NLD will not participate in coming general election because we wanted to face them again on November 7 for a fair fight,” NUP Secretary Khin Maung Gyi told a press conference Friday afternoon.

He criticised Suu Kyi for urging her supporters not to vote in the polls as undemocratic.

The NUP was set up to contest the 1990 general election by the now defunct Burma Union Socialist Party, the legislative arm of the military during former strongman Ne Win’s rule from 1962 to 1988.

It lost the 1990 polls heavily to the NLD led by Suu Kyi, 65, but the junta refused to relinquish power.

The NUP and USDP are both seen as pro-junta.

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

Altogether, 37 parties have been registered to run, but only the military-supported parties, such as the USDP and NUP, have been able to field enough candidates to win a majority in the upcoming polls for the lower, upper and regional houses of parliament.

Parties have complained the registration fee of 500 dollars per candidate is too high.

Criticism has also been aimed at the new regulations, which stipulate among others that political parties cannot include prisoners among their members. This effectively bars NLD from running, as its leader, Suu Kyi, is serving an 18-month jail term under house arrest.

Some 93 parties ran in the 1990 election, the first democratic polls in the country since 1962, when General Ne Win toppled elected premier U Nu in a coup.

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.