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Myanmar’s election commission, made up of members of the military junta, announced on Tuesday the dissolution of Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, for failing to register again under a strict new election law drawn up by the military, state media reported.
The military justified its February 2021 coup with baseless accusations of widespread fraud in the 2020 elections won by the National League for Democracy (NLD), ending a 10-year democratic experiment and plunging the country into turmoil.
In January, he gave political parties two months to re-register under a strict new electoral law drafted by the military ahead of new elections that he has promised to hold but which opponents say will be neither free nor fair.
Of the 90 existing parties, only 50 have applied to re-register under the new rules, according to state broadcaster MRTV. The rest will be dissolved as of Wednesday.
Suu Kyi co-founded the NLD in 1988 and won a landslide victory in the 1990 elections, which were later annulled by the then military junta.
The NLD carried the torch for democratic aspirations in military-ruled Myanmar, scoring landslide victories over military-backed parties in the 2015 and 2020 elections.
Its leadership has been decimated by the junta’s bloody crackdown on dissent, which has executed a former legislator for the first time in decades.
Some leaders in exile had previously called for the party not to re-register under the new rules.
The military-backed Union, Solidarity and Development Party had applied to re-register, according to a junta statement.
The military junta promises new repressive measures
Last month, the military announced a six-month extension of the two-year state of emergency and postponed elections it had promised to hold in August because it did not control enough of the country for it to take place.
On Monday, the head of the junta, Min Aung Hlaing, vowed to continue his crackdown on opponents, telling thousands of soldiers in an annual parade that elections would be held, though he did not give a timetable.
“Myanmar’s regime is preparing for a national election that, if imposed by force, will likely be the bloodiest in the country’s recent history,” said Richard Horsey, International Crisis Group’s senior adviser on Myanmar.
“The majority of the population is fiercely opposed to going to the polls to legitimize the political control of the military, so we will see violence escalate if the regime tries to impose a vote.”
Suu Kyi has been detained since the early hours of the February 2021 coup.
In December, the junta wrapped up a series of closed-door trials against the 77-year-old Nobel laureate, jailing her for a total of 33 years in a process that rights groups have condemned as a sham.
The coup triggered new clashes with ethnic rebels and gave rise to dozens of anti-junta “Popular Defense Forces” (FDP).
More than 3,100 people have been killed and more than 20,000 detained since the coup, according to a local monitoring group.
*With AFP; adapted from its original in English
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