Myanmar opposition party rejects polls

Mar 29, 2010, 11:55 GMT

Yangon - Myanmar's main opposition party - the National League for Democracy - on Monday decided not to contest a general election to be staged by the ruling junta some time this year.

'We say no to the election,' NLD deputy leader Tin Oo said after a day-long meeting of the party's executive committee members.

'There were no objections to the decision,' he said, dismissing reports of a deep split in the party over whether or not to contest the polls.

The NLD won Myanmar's last election in 1990 but has been denied power by the military for the past two decades.

The opposition party is headed by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Myanmar's ruling junta, which promised to hold a general election some time this year as part of their seven-step road map to democracy, earlier this month promulgated election laws that seemed designed to destroy the NLD as a political force.

The newly enacted Party Registration Law, for instance, specified that persons currently serving prison terms are not allowed to be members of political parties.

Suu Kyi is currently serving an 18-month house detention term.

'How can we expel her,?' asked Tin Oo, the deputy leader of the NLD. 'But if we don't register for the election then our party is no more.'

Last week Suu Kyi recommended that the NLD refuse to register the party to contest the polls, which the party has now acted on.

'If we stand for elections without Aung San Suu Kyi, we will not get any votes, so the NLD will go down the drain anyway,' Tin Oo told the German Press Agency dpa.

Tin Oo insisted that the NLD would continue to be a political force in Myanmar, even if it no longer operated as a political party.

'When Aung San Suu Kyi is released we will come back again,' he said.

Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar independence hero Aung San, is expected to finish her current detention term in late November. She has spent 14 of the past 20 years under house arrest.