Myanmar junta dissolves Suu Kyi's NLD party: state media
by AFP Staff Writers
Yangon (AFP) March 28, 2023

Myanmar's junta-stacked election commission announced Tuesday that Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy Party would be dissolved for failing to re-register under a tough new military-drafted electoral law, state media said.

The NLD, which Suu Kyi led to crushing victories over military-backed parties in elections in 2015 and 2020, will be "automatically cancelled as a political party" from Wednesday, according to the MRTV broadcaster.

The military justified its February 2021 power grab with unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud in 2020 elections, ending a 10-year democratic experiment and plunging the country into turmoil.

In January, the junta gave political parties two months to re-register under a strict new electoral law written by the military ahead of fresh polls it has promised to hold.

Its opponents say the polls will be neither free nor fair.

Last month, the junta announced a six-month extension of a two-year state of emergency and postponed elections it had promised to hold by August because it did not control enough of the country for a vote to take place.

More than 3,100 people have been killed and over 20,000 arrested since the coup, according to a local monitoring group.

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