Myanmar opposition chief Aung San Suu Kyi stated on Saturday her party would contest a national election in November, ending months of uncertainty about its participation in a vote that will be essential for the scope of the nation’s reforms.
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Should her party win the upcoming polls, the current constitution bars her from the presidency as her sons have British citizenship.
Aung San Suu Kyi, Chairperson of the NLD, told a press conference following a meeting of the party’s Central Executive Committee at her residence in the capital that the party including herself will compete in all three levels of the parliament and in nearly all constituencies.
Nobel laureate Suu Kyi has laid the groundwork for running in the November 8 parliamentary poll, but her National League for Democracy (NLD) had held out until now to commit to a ballot that is being billed as Myanmar’s first legitimate election in 25 years.
Suu Kyi will compete in her original constituency Kawmu, a township in Yangon region, in which Suu Kyi won the 2012 by- election as a representative to the House of Representatives ( Lower House).
“We are not going to the election without having an idea of how we intend to handle this problem”, Suu Kyi said.
Priority will be given to qualified party members, especially women, youth and ethnic people for selection of candidates, she said.
Suu Kyi is still unable to run for president after lawmakers recently turned down efforts to amend the constitution.
For Myanmar’s roughly 30 million voters the election presents a rare opportunity to cast their votes in a nationwide poll contested by the country’s main opposition. Another clause has the effect of barring Suu Kyi from presidency.
Myanmar was under military rule from 1962 until 2011, when the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party took power.
The NLD gained Myanmar’s final free and truthful election in 1990 in a landslide, however the outcome was ignored by the then ruling army, which ceded energy in 2011.
The NLD boycotted a 2010 poll held under military rule.
Suu Kyi reiterated that the lists needed to be corrected if the elections were to be free and fair, as President Thein Sein promised again after the poll date was announced on Wednesday.
The country has been reforming and opening up since the USDP won elections in 2010 and the country changed to a nominally civilian government.
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But as elections loom, fears have grown that the nation, which was ruled by the military for almost half a century, might be back-pedalling on its democratic transition.
