Myanmar junta eases rules governing political parties

YANGON: Myanmar’s junta has eased rules on the registration of political parties, state media reported on Wednesday, hours before a state of emergency is set to expire.

The junta seized power on February 1, 2021 after making unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud during 2020 elections won resoundingly by the party of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

The military has said it will hold fresh elections but has repeatedly extended the state of emergency imposed when it seized power, as it battles opponents across swathes of the country.

The new order halves to 50,000 the number of members parties must have in order to contest national elections, and cuts the number of townships they must operate in.

The notice signed by junta chief Min Aung Hlaing makes no mention of why the changes were made.

Before the coup, Suu Kyi’s NLD party trounced military-aligned rivals at the polls.

Last year the junta-stacked election commission announced the scrapping of the first-past-the-post system — under which the NLD won its crushing majorities.

A proportional representation system would be used across the country, it said.

It also introduced tough new rules political parties had to comply with and dissolved the NLD after it failed to submit an application to register.

Suu Kyi co-founded the NLD in 1988 and won a landslide victory in 1990 elections that were subsequently annulled by the then-junta.

The party carried the torch for democratic aspirations in military-ruled Myanmar and later won big victories over military-backed parties in elections in 2015 and 2020.

Its leadership has been decimated in the junta’s bloody crackdown on dissent, with one former lawmaker executed in the country’s first use of capital punishment in decades.

Three years after seizing power the junta is struggling to crush widespread armed opposition to its rule.

It is fighting pro-democracy armed groups and established ethnic minority armed groups across swathes of the country.

More than two million people have been displaced by violence since the putsch, according to the United Nations.