The electoral commission set up by Myanmar's ruling military group decided on Tuesday to dissolve the National League for Democracy, the party led by former chancellor Aung Sang Suu Kyi, state television announced.
Myanmar state television announced that the electoral commission set up by the ruling military group had decided on Tuesday to dissolve the National League for Democracy, the party led by Aung Sang Suu Kyi.
The committee said, according to the television, that it was “immediately decided to strip the status of a political party” from the National League for Democracy, the party that won a large percentage of the votes in the legislative elections in 2015 and 2020.
The committee added that it took this decision because the party failed to secure the conditions necessary to register itself according to the new election law approved by the ruling group, which includes strict provisions.
Myanmar has been in a state of chaos since the army overthrew the civilian government in February 2021, which was led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, on the grounds of electoral fraud.
Since then, the ruling military group has been promising to organize national elections. However, the army, which initially planned to hold elections before August, cited security and logistical reasons for delaying the elections, in a country facing a violent conflict that is partially out of its control.
State broadcaster MRTV reported that out of 90 parties in the country, only 50 have applied for re-registration under the new law. The rest of the parties will be dissolved as of Wednesday.
Suu Kyi co-founded the National League for Democracy in 1988, and won a landslide victory in the 1990 elections, which were later canceled by the military group.
After Suu Kyi's overthrow, the military group launched a bloody crackdown on dissent with the execution of a former deputy, the first death penalty carried out in the country in decades.
Some leaders living in exile had previously called on the party not to re-register under the new rules.
The army-backed Union Party for Solidarity and Development has submitted a request for re-registration, according to a statement from the military group.
The military group vows to tighten repression
In February, the army announced the extension of the state of emergency for a period of six months, which led to the postponement of the elections that were expected before August, because it does not control the country in a way that allows the voting process to take place.
On Monday, the head of the ruling military group in Myanmar, Min Aung Hlaing, vowed to continue the harsh campaign of repression against his opponents, stressing during a military parade in which tanks and missile launchers participated that the elections would be held when peace returned.
"The Myanmar regime is preparing for national elections that, if imposed by force, are likely to be the bloodiest in the country's modern history," said Richard Horsey, senior advisor on Myanmar at the International Crisis Group.
"The majority of the population is strongly opposed to participating in elections to legitimize the army's political control, so we will see an escalation of violence if the regime seeks to impose a vote," he added.
In December, the military group sentenced the former prime minister to 33 years in prison in a trial that rights groups have condemned as a sham.
Commenting on the decision, a spokesman for the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, said that the dissolution of the National League for Democracy is "another step in the direction that we do not want to go," calling for the release of Suu Kyi.
The army's coup against the Suu Kyi government caused renewed fighting with rebels and allowed the emergence of the "Popular Defense Forces" against the military group, which led to the outbreak of battles across the economically suffering country.
According to a local organization, more than 3,100 people have been killed in the military crackdown on the opposition since the coup.
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