Myanmar announces date for historic elections

The government in Yangon has announced elections for November. For the first time in a quarter century, the pro-democracy NLD party will be allowed to participate in general parliamentary elections in Myanmar.

Deutsche Welle, 8 July 2015

Myanmar will hold a general election on November 8, the first to be contested by Aung San Suu Kyi’s (pictured above) National League for Democracy (NLD) in decades. The election will see members elected to both houses of parliament in Yangon, according to an announcement on Wednesday.

The highly anticipated poll comes as the country slowly approaches reform following nearly fifty years of military rule which saw Suu Kyi’s pro-democracy activism result in years of house arrest. The last time the NLD was on the ballot in 1990 it won around 80 percent of the seats in parliament, but the junta refused to release its grip on power.

"The general election will be held on November 8. The Union Election Commission will announce further details later," Thant Zin Aung, deputy director of Yangon's election commission, told French news agency AFP.

Suu Kyi barred from becoming president

The next president will then be chosen by parliament, though Nobel laureate Suu Kyi is barred from the position by the country’s constitution because her sons have British citizenship. Though there have been efforts to reform the relevant statutes, so far no change has been made.

When asked if they would participate in the election, an NLD spokesman told AFP that they "cannot say whether we will take part right now. We need to hold a meeting to make a decision."

The election would likely pit the NLD against the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which was backed by the military in 2010 elections as the country began to accept democratic reforms.

es/jil (AFP, dpa)