Mizzima/RFA-July 11
The Myanmar junta’s Union Election Commission (UEC) barred both the Democracy and Human Rights Party, and the Kachin National Congress Party, from its proposed 2025 election. According to reports in state-run newspapers on 9 July, the UEC rejected applications for political party registration applications by the Human Rights Party, founded by the mainly-Muslim Rohingya group, and the Kachin National Congress Party, representing the Kachin people. On 26 January 2023, the junta amended Section 25 of the Political Parties Registration Law, to require that all parties re-register under the junta within 60 days. Political parties who want to contest the election must successfully register under Section 25 of the junta’s Political Parties Registration Law to be allowed to stand. In an 8 July statement about why it rejected the two parties’ applications the UEC said: “According to the reviews of the ministries concerned regarding the application of the Kachin National Congress (KNC) and the Democracy and Human Rights Party for the right to continue as political parties and registration under section 25 of the Political Parties Registration Law, the Union Election Commission found that the first party is contrary to the stipulations in section 6 of the Registration of Political Parties Law and the latter is contrary to the stipulations in section 5.” The commission told junta-backed newspapers that the Democracy and Human Rights Party was barred because it did not comply with the branding and policy requirements of the Political Parties Registration Law, but it didn’t specify which point the group had violated. The Democracy and Human Rights party has resurfaced multiple times throughout the country’s complicated political history. Opponents of military rule say the junta’s promised election will be a sham given that the country’s most popular political leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been jailed for 27 years on charges she denies, and the election organiser has banned more than 80 parties from any political activity. Read more at: https://eng.mizzima.com/2024/07/11/11630
