Bangkok (EFE).- The Burmese Electoral Commission, controlled by a military junta since the 2021 coup, dissolved on Wednesday the party led by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who was overthrown during the coup.
The National League for Democracy (NLD), headed by Suu Kyi and which swept the 2020 and 2015 elections, is one of the 40 political groups dissolved for not registering for the elections that the military junta intends to organize, in an unspecified date.
In January, the military junta published a new electoral law with strict requirements for parties to register to vote and gave them two months to comply.
The Electoral Commission has published a statement with the list, which is included today in the official newspaper The Global New Light of Myanmar, of the parties that “did not apply within the specified period” and therefore “have been canceled (…) and have been dissolved”.
Suu Kyi’s party, which is serving a 33-year sentence for various crimes filed after the military took power, had previously declared its intention not to register for the elections to avoid legitimizing these military-orchestrated votes.
Doubts about the electoral call
The United States and human rights organizations have also denounced that a vote organized by the junta will not be free or fair.
“It is outrageous and unacceptable that the Burmese military has appointed an ‘election commission’ to order the dissolution of Suu Kyi’s party. This demonstrates the real intention of the so-called law of political parties of the board “by which the formations had to be registered, denounces today Phil Robertson, deputy director for Asia of the NGO Human Rights Watch.
Among the formations that will vote is the Union Solidarity and Development Party, linked to the military, and 62 other platforms.
The coup d’état of February 1, 2021 has plunged Burma into a deep political, social and economic crisis, and has opened a spiral of violence with new civilian militias that have exacerbated the guerrilla war that the country has been experiencing for decades.
The military junta justified the seizure of power for alleged electoral fraud during the 2020 elections, where the National League for Democracy overwhelmingly prevailed and which, according to independent observers, proceeded freely and reflected the popular will.
More than 3,000 people have been killed in the brutal crackdown by security forces, who have shot to kill peaceful and unarmed protesters, and more than 17,000 remain in detention, including Suu Kyi and other NLD members, according to reports. latest data from the Burmese NGO Association for the Assistance of Political Prisoners.