Ajit Karn
Yangon: Myanmar’s junta-dominated election commission declared on Tuesday that Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy would be dissolved for failing to re-register under a strict new electoral legislation crafted by the military, state media reported.
The military justified its February 2021 coup with unsubstantiated allegations of pervasive fraud in the 2020 elections won by the NLD, terminating a decade-long experiment in democracy and plunging the country into chaos.
In January, it granted political parties two months to re-register under a rigorous new electoral law drafted by the military in preparation for fresh elections it has pledged to hold, but which its opponents claim will not be free or fair.
According to state broadcaster MRTV, only 50 of the 90 extant parties had re-registered under the new rules. On Wednesday, the remainder would be dissolved.
Suu Kyi co-founded the NLD in 1988 and achieved a resounding victory in 1990 elections that were later annulled by the then-junta.
The National League for Democracy (NLD) carried the torch for democratic aspirations in military-ruled Myanmar and defeated military-backed parties in 2015 and 2020 elections.
Its leadership has been decimated as a result of the junta’s violent assault on dissent, with one former lawmaker executed by the junta in the country’s first execution in decades.
A number of exiled leaders had previously urged the party not to re-register under the new regulations.
According to a junta statement, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, which is supported by the military, submitted a request to re-register.
Junta pledges continued repression
The military announced a six-month extension of a two-year state of emergency and postponed elections it had promised to hold by August because it did not control enough of the country to hold a vote.
Monday, junta leader Min Aung Hlaing assured thousands of soldiers at an annual parade that elections would be conducted, although he did not specify when.
“The Myanmar regime is preparing for national elections that, if imposed by force, are likely to be the bloodiest in the country’s recent history,” said International Crisis Group’s senior adviser on Myanmar, Richard Horsey.
The majority of the population is vehemently opposed to voting in order to legitimize the military’s political control, so violence will escalate if the regime attempts to impose a vote.
Since the early hours of the February 2021 rebellion, Suu Kyi has been incarcerated.
In December, the junta concluded a series of closed-court proceedings of the 77-year-old Nobel laureate, sentencing her to a total of 33 years in prison in a procedure that human rights organizations condemned as a sham.
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The coup prompted renewed battling with ethnic insurgents and spawned dozens of anti-junta “People’s Defence Forces” (PDFs), with large swaths of the country ravaged by fighting and the economy in ruins.
Since the revolt, a local monitoring group reports that more than 3,100 people have been slain and over 20,000 have been arrested.
