Myanmar dissolves Aung San Suu Kyi’s party ahead of controversial elections

The ousted ruling party of Myanmar’s former leader Aung San Suu Kyi was among 40 political parties the military-appointed election commission dissolved on Tuesday, after they failed to meet a registration deadline for an election set to perpetuate the military’s political dominance.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) is among dozens of parties that held parliamentary seats in the past decade that were severely weakened by the military’s 2021 coup and crackdown on its opponents.

Many of the parties are unable or unwilling to contest the election, which has widely been dismissed by critics as a sham.

In a live broadcast late on Tuesday, state-run Myawaddy TV said 63 parties had registered for the election at local or national level and named 40 parties that were automatically disbanded for failure to sign up.

Political activists under arrest

The polls, for which no date has been announced, are almost certain to be swept by the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), a military proxy that was trounced by the NLD in the 2015 election and in a 2020 vote that the generals eventually voided, citing unaddressed irregularities.

“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 Suu Kyi’s party, said Tuesday.

The hugely popular Nobel laureate Suu Kyi is among scores of NLD officials currently in prison. She has been found guilty of multiple counts of corruption, a breach of a state secrets law and incitement, among other crimes.

Suu Kyi, 77, is serving prison sentences totalling 33 years after being convicted in a series of politically tainted prosecutions brought by the military.

Her supporters say the charges were contrived to prevent her from participating in politics.

Post-coup conflict

The National League for Democracy was founded in 1988 in the wake of a failed uprising against military rule. It won a 1990 general election that was invalidated by the country’s military rulers.

It was technically banned after it boycotted a 2010 election held under military auspices because it felt it was not free or fair, but was allowed to register when it agreed to run in 2011. It took power after a landslide victory in the 2015 general election.

The army said it staged its 2021 takeover because of massive poll fraud, though independent election observers did not find any major irregularities. Some critics of Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who led the takeover and is now Myanmar’s top leader, believe he acted because the vote thwarted his own political ambitions.

The new polls had been expected by the end of July, according to the army’s own plans. But in February, the military announced a six-month extension of its state of emergency, delaying the possible legal date for holding an election. It said security could not be assured.

The military does not control large swaths of the country, where it faces widespread armed resistance to its rule.

“Amid the state oppression following the 2021 coup, no election can be credible, especially when much of the population sees a vote as a cynical attempt to supplant the landslide victory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy in 2020,” said a report issued Tuesday by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank. 

“The polls will almost certainly intensify the post-coup conflict, as the regime seeks to force them through and resistance groups seek to disrupt them.”