Burmese State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday raised her party’s flag at its office in the capital to start an election campaign that could be disrupted by a resurgence of COVID-19 infections.
Her National League for Democracy is widely expected to again win the most seats in the Nov. 8 general election and Aung San Suu Kyi is expected to remain as state counselor, the de facto head of state.
The main opponent is the Union Solidarity and Development Party, formed by former generals. Myanmar was under military rule from 1962 until a nominally civilian government took over in 2011.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Aung San Suu Kyi said that her plan to open her campaign with a tour of her constituency just outside Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, was canceled because of travel restrictions due to surging COVID-19 cases.
Cases have spiked suddenly after Myanmar registered months of relatively low numbers.
The Burmese Ministry of Health and Sports yesterday morning reported 92 more cases, bringing the total to 1,610.
Rakhine State, where the vast majority of the new cases have been found, is under lockdown, as are parts of Yangon. Restrictions are in force in several other cities, including the capital, Naypyidaw.
The Burmese Union Election Commission has not yet decided on a postponement of the election, but has not allowed campaign activities in areas where a “stay-at-home” program has been implemented, which include the whole of Rakhine State and seven townships in Yangon.
The commission has said that it would decide next month whether to allow voting in areas where armed struggles are active with ethnic minorities that have battled for decades for greater autonomy.
Wearing white gloves and a plastic face shield over a mask in her party’s trademark vivid red color, Aung San Suu Kyi slowly hauled her party’s flag up the pole to the blaring accompaniment of campaign music. Her aides observed from a distance, standing a socially distanced few meters apart from each other.
As she waited for her vehicle at the end of the brief ceremony, she joked with the media, telling them they should cast one vote for her party for every picture they had just taken.
Voters in the November election are to choose members of the upper and lower houses of the national parliament, as well as the official state and region parliaments. There are almost 7,000 candidates from 94 political parties.
Aung San Suu Kyi is by far the country’s most popular politician, even as she has been scorned internationally for Myanmar’s oppression of the Rohingya Muslim ethnic group.
More than 700,000 Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape the army’s brutal counterinsurgency campaign in 2017.
Foreigners who admired her for her non-violent struggle against Myanmar’s military rule, which won her the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, were disappointed by her defense of the military’s actions.
As state counselor, she does not oversee the military, but she has repeatedly denied accusations that the army committed genocide against the Rohingya.
The International Court of Justice in the Netherlands is investigating the genocide case.
The 2008 constitution that was implemented during military rule has a clause that bans Aung San Suu Kyi from being president because she has children who are foreign nationals; she was married to Michael Aris, a British academic who died in 1999.
The post of state counselor was created to skirt the problem.
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