Myanmar’s election commission held a meeting on Tuesday morning with major political parties to discuss a postponement of an election scheduled for November. 8 due to flooding, a government official and a politician present at the meeting told Reuters.
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Union Election Commission Chairman Tin Aye told reporters that the election to choose a new parliament “might be delayed”.
Win Htein, a central executive committee member of Ms. Suu Kyi’s party-which is fielding the largest number of candidates-said that a postponement of the vote “absolutely can not happen”.
State media separately announced Tuesday that elections would be canceled in 400 villages, saying that it was “impossible to hold elections in a free and fair manner” in those places.
Ms Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burma’s independence hero Aung San, returned to her homeland from her life in Oxford in 1988 to head the pro-democracy movement.
Myanmar is still recovering from massive floods in recent months that damaged infrastructure across the country and displaced 1.6 million people, but they were not previously thought to threaten the date of the polls.
Several diplomats and other analysts noted that the proposed delay – and suspicions that the ruling party or the powerful military wanted to buy time -might have worked in the NLD’s favor by further undermining trust in the USDP.
“We invited political parties to get their opinions”. Parts of western Myanmar, including the impoverished Chin state, were devastated by the disaster.
“This is a false excuse, the disasters in Chin and flooding are quite negotiable”, said Win Htein. The government is trying to reach a ceasefire agreement with multiple insurgent groups.
Mr Thein Sein, a former general, has been widely praised for overseeing a democratic transition after the military ceded power to a quasi-civilian government in 2011. The USDP leadership split publicly in August and Massachusetts Ba Tha, an organisation led by hardline nationalist monks, has sharply criticised the NLD, stoking religious tensions.
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Myanmar’s military retains significant sway in the nation five years after giving up half-a-century of direct rule.
