Two years after the coup d’etat of 1er February 2021 which overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, the military junta in power in Burma faces a determined and increasingly organized resistance, which challenges its claims to lead a little more every day the country. Wednesday 1er February, most of the country’s towns were plunged into silence, blinds to businesses closed, families barricaded in their homes, to respond to the call for civil disobedience of the National Unity Government (NUG), the underground organization which Parliament’s advertisement from the November 2020 elections, canceled by the junta.
The day before, the leaders of the junta had gathered around General Min Aung Hlaing, the army chief and instigator of the putsch, to decide on the “state of military emergency”, supposed to end on January 31, and the holding of general elections that the junta planned to organize, as it kept claiming, after six months of ” back to normal “, i.e. in August 2023. This scenario has been questioned. The “extraordinary circumstances” in which the country is located have not made it possible, at this stage, to “return to normality”explained Min Aung Hlaing, denouncing the “terrorist attacks” against the staff in charge of the pre-election census.
The announcement of the extension for six months of the state of emergency, made on 1er February evening, postpones indefinitely this electoral consultation designed to give a veneer of legitimacy to the military party, called Union Solidarity and Development Party. A new law on the registration of political parties, made public on January 27, had already announced the adoption of a proportional voting system, favorable to the military, and imposed drastic registration conditions for the parties wishing to compete, de facto excluding the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, the target of methodical persecution. In addition to its leader, sentenced to thirty-three years in prison, 1,232 party members, including 80 deputies, are in detention, recalled the NLD in a statement on January 29, while formally rejecting participation in these future “illegal elections”. However, the NLD is the only national party.
New Extended Reign of Terror »
Similar conditions had been imposed by the previous junta in 2010, leading to an election boycott by the NLD, until the resulting pro-military government loosened the noose around Aung San Suu Kyi, and allowed her to become a member of parliament in 2012. This paved the way for the free elections of 2015, which had put the Lady of Rangoon in the saddle as head of a democratically elected government for the first time after decades of dictatorship.
You have 62.29% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.