NLD
- News
NLD Plan to Scrap Yangon Township Is Gerrymandering, Says Former USDP MP Ousted for Cheating in Election
Nay Myo Aung says merging Seikkan with neighbouring townships will hit USDP hardest
- In-Depth
NLD Wants Military Lawmakers Out of Parliament By 2035… And a New National Flag
Raft of proposed changes to charter includes nitpicking about language and attempts to boost civilian powers, but military seems unlikely to allow real change
- News
USDP Lawmaker Removed From Seat for Cheating in By-Election
A Union Election Commission tribunal has ruled to remove a USDP regional lawmaker from his seat after finding him guilty of cheating during his November 2018 by-election campaign.
- News
Why Meikhtila went green – how USDP won in a traumatised city
In the sea of the National League for Democracy’s overwhelming victory in Myanmar’s Nov. 8 elections there was a small island of success for the ruling party. Meikhtila, a city in central Mandalay Region, had a sitting lawmaker from Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD, whose re-election perhaps had seemed assured. But at a polling station on the night of the vote, as public tabulation began, the name “Dr.Maung Thin” was repeated time and again. Victory for the former rector of Meikhtila University who ran for a Lower House seat for the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) was confirmed the next day. The NLD lost three other Mandalay townships, but it was the defeat at Meikhtila – where the USDP won about two-thirds of the roughly 150,000 votes for union and local level seats – that stood out. The garrison town was the scene of large-scale communal violence between Muslims and Buddhists in 2013 that left 44 people dead and more than 10,000 displaced. The electoral success of the USDP, which had been campaigning on a nationalist platform that was endorsed by radical Ma Ba Tha monks, raised questions over whether the experience of the riots had affected voters’ behaviour.…
- News
Incumbent lawmakers to remain in parliament until January
Just days after the National League for Democracy (NLD) clinched a historic election victory, Burmese lawmakers elected in the flawed 2010 polls are due to resume their work on Monday and legislate for another two and a half months. The peculiar arrangement, unique to the country, was dreamt up by the military drafters of the 2008 constitution. It has been criticised by Burma’s new leader-in-waiting Aung San Suu Kyi and raises questions over what decisions the outgoing ruling party will to try push through before they hand over power. [related] “This is the only constitution in the world where there is such a wide gap between an election and the forming of a new administration,” the NLD leader told reporters at a press conference on 5 November. “This is a matter of concern because … the whole picture might have changed completely (after elections), but still the present legislature will go on until the 31st of January at least.” In most countries, parliament is dissolved immediately after the polls and reconvened by the winning parties, said Tin Maung Maung Than, a senior fellow with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. “The system in Myanmar [Burma] is pretty unusual.…
