Yangon - Myanmar's ruling military junta on Thursday appointed a 17-member
election commission to oversee multi-party elections planned for this year. The commission is to be chaired by Thein Soe, a deputy chief justice, and comprise other figures of "high esteem" in the eyes of the ruling junta. The commission is empowered to decide which political parties may contest the polls, set the rules for polling and disqualify any party or contestant for breaking those rules.
With all commissioners appointed by the junta, the prospects for a free and fair election this year are deemed bleak.
The junta on Thursday also announced the official annulment of the 1990 election, which should have brought the National League for Democracy (NLD) party of opposition leader
Aung San Suu Kyi to power.
"The previous election results shall be automatically invalidated because they are no longer in accordance with the constitution," said the new People's Parliament Election Law, copies of which were published in state-run media Thursday.
The eight-page law also bars people who are currently serving prison terms from running in elections, such as Suu Kyi, the secretary general of the NLD, who is currently serving an 18-month house detention sentence. She has spent 14 of the past 21 years under house arrest. There are another 2,100 political prisoners in
Myanmar jails.
The Political Party Registration Law, published Wednesday, likewise excluded prisoners from membership of political parties, effectively forcing the NLD to drop Suu Kyi as its leader or forfeit its right to contest the next general election, which the junta plans for this year.
The junta on Monday announced five new election laws and began publishing them one at a time beginning Tuesday in the government-controlled media.
The long-awaited legislation is in preparation for this year's election, whose date has yet to be announced.
The NLD won Myanmar's last general election two decades ago by a landslide, but the generals who have ruled the country since 1962 refused to hand power to a civilian government, arguing that a new constitution was required first.
A military-appointed committee took 18 years to finish a new constitution, which was pushed through in a sham referendum held in May 2008. The new charter cements military control over any future elected government by making the upper house of the National Parliament a partially junta-appointed body with veto power over legislation.
Details of the National Parliament Election Law for the upper house are to be published Friday. "Elections shall be held when possible for one day and on a holiday," the People's Parliament Election Law said. "Election dates are to be announced in advance."
Although a date has yet to be announced for the 2010 polls, the junta was expected to hold them by the end of October, before Suu Kyi's 18-month detention is up.
The election laws appear designed to assure that the NLD does not win a second time. The party has been given 60 days to reregister as a contestant with the Election Committee, which has the power to disqualify the NLD's application should the party choose to contest the polls.
Meanwhile, the junta on Thursday gave the NLD permission to reopen all its party branches nationwide. Most have been closed by the junta for years.
Myanmar's election laws and the exclusion of Suu Kyi and 2,100 other political prisoners from the polls provoked criticism that the process would be neither free nor fair.
"We made clear that, given the tenor of the election laws that they have put forward, there's no hope that this election will be credible," State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said in
Washington Wednesday. He added that the laws make the election a "mockery of the democratic process."
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday that he was carefully studying the new electoral laws issued by the junta.
"The indications available so far suggest that they do not measure up to our expectations of what is needed for an inclusive political process," Ban said in a statement.
