Myanmar's detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi can vote

May 2, 2008, 11:25 GMT

Yangon - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been registered to vote in the upcoming referendum on May 10, despite the fact that she remains under house detention, opposition sources said Friday.

Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest since May, 2003, is on the list of eligible voters registered in Bahan township of Yangon permitted to cast their ballots in the May 10 referendum to decide the fate of Myanmar's new constitution, said National League for Democracy (NLD) spokesman U Lwin.

Although permitted to participate in the referendum, it is unclear whether Myanmar's ruling junta will free Suu Kyi - the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate - from house arrest to actually allow her to exercise her voting right.

Suu Kyi, the leader of the NLD, has only been freed occasionally over the past four years to briefly meet with visiting United Nations special envoys.

She has spent 12 of the past 18 years under house arrest.

An estimated 30 million out of Myanmar's 56 million population will be eligible to vote in the upcoming referendum on a military-sponsored constitution that promises to cement the generals' dominant role in Myanmar politics after a general election planned in 2010.

   The referendum on the constitution, which took 14 years to draft, was announced in February, amid intensifying international pressure on Myanmar's military regime to demonstrate its sincerity in moving towards some form of democratic system in the aftermath of its latest crackdown on its own people in September of last year, when the government brutally suppressed protests led by Buddhist monks.

In the same month the regime also announced a new law that punishes anyone caught publicly criticizing the referendum with a three-year jail term and a fine.

   In March and April scores of activists were detained for holding peaceful protests urging a 'No' vote on the referendum, including five members of Suu Kyi's NLD who participated in a peaceful protest in Yangon, according Human Rights Watch (HRW).  

   The New York-based rights group said in a report on the referendum issued Monday that conditions for a free and fair referendum on May 10 do not exist because of widespread repression, media censorship, bans on political gatherings, the lack of an independent referendum commission and courts to supervise the vote, and a pervasive climate of fear created by the ruling junta in the run-up to the election in the country also known as Burma.

The constitution, if approved, will essentially legitimize the military's dominant role in a future, elected government

Under the draft charter, 110 members of 440-seat lower house, or People's Parliament, and 56 members of the 224-seat upper house, or National Parliament, would be selected by the military.

   Control of this 25 per cent of both houses would effectively bar amendments to the charter that might threaten the military's dominance, since for an amendment to pass, it would require more than 75-per-cent support.

   The draft constitution also includes restrictions excluding many opposition politicians from running for office and a clause that effectively prevents opposition leader Suu Kyi from holding any elected office because she is the widow of a foreigner.

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has been under military rule since 1962, when General Ne Win staged a coup d'etat that overthrew the country's first post-independence prime minister, U Nu.