The Myanmar military’s Election Commission (EC) announced on Tuesday that it had dissolved former democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party.
Dissolution of NLD
The EC said the move had been made after the party failed to re-register under a new military-drafted electoral law introduced in January.
The law granted the country’s political parties two months’ time to re-register for an election that the military has promised to hold. However, only 50 out of 90 existing parties applied to re-register under the new rules, state broadcaster MRTV said. Following this, the remaining parties face dissolution starting today.
The NLD refused to register under the new law, saying that it would not contest an election that is bound to be illegitimate.
“We absolutely do not accept that an election will be held at a time when many political leaders and political activists have been arrested and the people are being tortured by the military,” Bo Bo Oo, one of the elected lawmakers from NLD, said on Tuesday.
While no formal date has been announced for the election, it is expected to be held towards the end of July.
The military dissolving political parties including the NLD goes further than they ever dared before. They will never compromise. There will be no negotiated solution. The only hope for the future of Myanmar is the complete removal of the Myanmar military.
— Mark Farmaner (@MarkFarmaner) March 28, 2023
NLD — The Junta’s Main Opposition
Nobel laureate Suu Kyi co-founded NLD in 1988; it won the 1990 elections by a landslide victory. However, the result was subsequently annulled by the then-junta.
In a similar recent turn of events, the NLD won the November 2020 general elections, which were annulled by the military, on the allegation of the election being rigged.
Subsequently, the military took over the reins of the government in a putsch, and has since ruled the country with an iron fist, including by imposing a 33-year prison sentence on Suu Kyi.
Oppression of Opposition
The latest move is viewed as another attempt by the junta to oppress its opposition and secure control over governance machinery.
It comes only days after military chief Min Aung Hlaing pledged during the Armed Forces Day parade to continue cracking down on the junta’s opponents.
According to the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, a local monitoring group, more than 3,100 people have been killed and over 20,000 have been arrested since the coup in February 2021.