Myanmar’s military regime yesterday unveiled the last of its election laws, which detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has described as unjust and repressive.
The laws bar the Nobel Peace laureate from running for office or even voting in polls and greatly weaken her National League for Democracy (NLD). The date of the election has not been announced.
The fifth and last law, carried in state-owned newspapers yesterday, governs elections to 14 regional parliaments. Details of the five laws have trickled out over the course of the week.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“Aung San Suu Kyi said she never expected such repressive laws would come out but said she’s not disappointed,” her party spokesman Nyan Win told reporters after meeting the 64-year-old democracy leader at her home on Thursday.
‘UNFAIR’
“She said such challenges call for resolute responses and calls on the people and democratic forces to take unanimous action against such unfair laws,” he said.
Nyan Win said he was not yet in a position to say how the party would respond. Her party has yet to decide whether it will participate in the elections. Political parties have 60 days from Monday to register.
It will be the first poll since 1990, when Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide victory. The junta ignored the results of that vote and has kept her jailed or under detention for 14 of the past 20 years.
This year’s elections are part of the junta’s “roadmap to democracy,” which critics deride as a sham designed to cement the military’s power.
REFERENDUM
A military-backed Constitution was approved by a national referendum last May, but the opposition charges that the vote was unfair.
An election law announced on Wednesday prohibits anyone convicted of a crime from being a member of a political party, making Aung San Suu Kyi ineligible to become a candidate in the elections — or even a member of the party she co-founded and heads.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS