Leaders of most of Myanmar’s major political parties have decided not to attend a meeting with the country’s junta-appointed election body on Friday.
The meeting will be just the second held since the military appointed all new members to the Union Election Commission (UEC) in the wake of its February 1 coup, which it staged on the pretext of alleged irregularities in last year’s election.
The first meeting, held in late February, was attended by 53 political parties, only 10 of which had won any seats in the November 2020 general election.
Major ethnic parties such as the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), the Arakan National Party (ANP), and the Kachin State People’s Party (KSPP) are among those that will not be in attendance on Friday.
Also absent will be the Democratic Party for a New Society (DPNS), formed in 1988, and the United Nationalities Democracy Party (UNDP), which was founded in 2019 by former members of the National League for Democracy (NLD).
The NLD, which won last year’s election by a landslide, was due to form a new government when it was ousted by the coup. Most of its leaders are now in detention or in hiding.
Aung Moe Zaw, the chair of the DPNS, said in a video uploaded to the party’s Facebook page on Wednesday that his party refused to attend the Friday meeting because it rejected the coup regime’s “illegitimate” actions. It also boycotted the previous meeting.
“We are a political party that always says we are working for the public. They are killing and arresting members of the public on a daily basis and even threatening us with arrest. I myself have been charged with incitement. I don’t think we should attend the meeting for any reason,” he said.
The longtime pro-democracy activist added that the party would continue to boycott the regime until the path to democracy is restored in the country. He also called on other political parties to stand together with the people.
“We are a political party that always says we are working for the public. They are killing and arresting members of the public on a daily basis and even threatening us with arrest. I myself have been charged with incitement. I don’t think we should attend the meeting for any reason.”
The chair of the SNLD, Sai Nyunt Lwin, told Myanmar Now that his party—which won 42 seats in last year’s election—did not even consider attending the meeting on Friday.
The SNLD, which is the largest ethnic party in the country, is more concerned with ongoing clashes and the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.
The party was also absent from the first junta-led UEC meeting in February.
The KSPP and the ANP, which both joined the February meeting, said they decided against attending this time around for a number of reasons.
“We were busy with Covid-19 issues and with our plans to relocate our party headquarters,” said KSPP central executive member Jan Hkung, adding that there was no discussion in the party about whether to accept the invitation of the military council’s UEC.
Tun Aung Kyaw, the joint secretary of the ANP, said that his party did discuss the possibility of attending the meeting, but decided against it on security grounds.
“As we all know, even administrators have been shot in the head. And there have also been explosions,” he said.
Naw Ohn Hla, the prominent rights activist who is also vice-chair of the UNDP, declined to comment on the party’s decision not to attend, apart from noting that it made the same choice in February.
Most of the parties that attended the last meeting were allied with the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, although a handful of ethnic parties also took part.
During that meeting, the junta-appointed UEC chairman announced that the results of last year’s election had been annulled over allegations of voter fraud.
In its final report on the election, however, the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) said that “the results of the 2020 elections were, by and large, representative of the will of the people of Myanmar.”
The regime has said that it will hold elections again at an unspecified time, but few observers believe that they will be free or fair.
“The junta that staged the coup appointed the people who will run the election. How can we trust them to hold a fair election?” said the leader of an ethnic party who spoke to Myanmar Now on condition of anonymity.
One of the few parties not directly connected to the military that decided to attend the meeting was the People’s Party, whose chair, Ko Ko Gyi, has been a well-known political figure since the 1988 pro-democracy uprising.
“The junta that staged the coup appointed the people who will run the election. How can we trust them to hold a fair election?”
Ko Ko Gyi declined to speak to Myanmar Now about the decision, but in a recent interview with the BBC, he said that most of the party’s members agreed with the move.
“The majority of members think we should attend the meeting to officially express the party’s political stance and our views,” he said.
However, a number of senior party members, including the party’s general secretary and Ko Ko Gyi’s longtime associate Ye Naing Aung, have resigned over the decision.
The party did not send representatives to the UEC meeting in February.
