Supporters of Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi said yesterday they would form a new political party after her National League for Democracy (NLD) was forcibly abolished ahead of rare elections.
At least 25 former members of the NLD will form a new pro-democracy party to advance the movement’s two decades of resistance against the ruling junta, said Khin Maung Swe, one of the leaders.
“The NLD is finished, but we will continue the NLD’s unfinished political duty by keeping our faith with the NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” he said, using a respectful form of address for the Nobel peace laureate.
Khin Maung Swe, a former NLD spokesman and member of its decision-making central executive committee, said they aimed to register the party this month, but had not yet decided on a name or whether to take part in this year’s polls.
The process for registration of new parties will officially begin from yesterday.
The NLD refused to meet a May 6 deadline to re-register as a party — a move that would have forced it to expel its own leader — and boycotted the scheduled vote, which will be the first in Myanmar in two decades.
Under the election laws handed down by the ruling junta, which have been widely criticized by the international community, the NLD was officially abolished at midnight on Thursday.
“The NLD is not a legal registered party any more according to the law. That is for sure now,” a government official said on condition of anonymity.
Analysts say that within Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, there has been friction between older, hard-line members and younger more moderate figures who opposed the boycott decision.
Nyan Win, the NLD’s longtime spokesman, urged the founders of the new democracy movement to refuse to participate in the polls, which critics say are a sham designed to legitimize the junta’s half-century grip on power.
“They should formally obey the unanimous decision of the NLD” to boycott the elections, he said. “Whether they obey the decision or not is their choice, but I’m not preventing them.”
Witnesses said the doors of the NLD headquarters in Myanmar’s main city Yangon had opened as usual yesterday, and that the party’s signboards and its “fighting peacock” flag were still in view.
Along with Aung San Suu Kyi’s lakeside home, where she has been detained for 14 of the last 20 years, the shabby wooden building has been the focus of efforts to end nearly half a century of military rule.
Nyan Win had said earlier that former members would continue operating from their headquarters, and that some were pursuing a new mandate to focus on social and development work.
“The authorities have not informed us of anything yet, but it will be according to the law,” he said of the dissolution of the party. “We will not exist as a legal registered party, but our headquarters will be open as usual.”
The NLD was founded in 1988 after a popular uprising against the military junta that left thousands dead. Two years later, the party won elections in a landslide, but the results were never recognized by the regime.
Prominent rights activist Win Tin, a former political prisoner and senior NLD member, told French radio service RFI he had no regrets over the controversial decision to boycott the polls.
“We would have lost all dignity, all credibility by placing ourselves in the service of the junta,” he said, adding that the decision did not mean that the struggle for democracy in Myanmar was over.
“It really doesn’t matter to us that they dissolve us. We will not go away. We will not abandon our ideology, our political struggle, our leadership. We will remain as a party,” the 80-year-old activist said.
Aung San Suu Kyi filed a lawsuit last week to try to overturn the election laws, which also officially nullify the 1990 poll results, but the Supreme Court turned down the bid.
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