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Burma Junta Bars Suu Kyi From NLD, Elections
March 10, 2010

Protesters hold portraits of Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi during a protest in New Delhi. (AFP Photo) Protesters hold portraits of Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi during a protest in New Delhi. (AFP Photo)
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Rangoon. Burmese opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi faces expulsion from her own party and is barred from standing in polls this year under new election laws unveiled on Wednesday. 

In a move swiftly branded “disappointing and regrettable” by the United States, the ruling military junta announced in state newspapers that no one serving a jail term can belong to a political party. 

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy — which won Burma’s last elections in 1990 but was stopped from taking power by the junta — would in turn be abolished if it failed to obey the rules. 

The Nobel Peace laureate was sentenced to three years’ jail in August over an incident in which a US man swam to her lakeside home. Her sentence was commuted to 18 months’ house arrest. 

“I have noticed that we have to expel Daw Suu. Their attitude is clear in this law,” NLD spokesman Nyan Win said, using a respectful form of address for Suu Kyi. “I was extremely surprised. I did not think it would be so bad.” 

The Political Parties Registration Act also gives the NLD just 60 days from Monday to register as a party if it wants to take part in the elections, or else face dissolution. 

Critics have dismissed the polls, which junta leader Than Shwe has promised to hold later this year, as a sham aimed at legitimizing the military’s nearly five-decade grip on power. 

The 64-year-old Suu Kyi has been detained for 14 of the past 20 years. She was already barred from being a poll candidate under a new constitution approved in a 2008 referendum holding that those married to foreigners are ineligible. Her husband, British academic Michael Aris, died in 1999. 

The new law prevents 2,100 political prisoners from taking part in the elections. It also bars people from any religious order — including Buddhist monks — from being candidates. Monks led mass anti-junta protests in 2007. 

A total of five laws were enacted on Monday. The first stipulates that the regime itself will hand-pick members of the electoral commission. 

 

Agence France-Presse