mizzima.com-Oct 19
According to the campaign organization Progressive Voice, though junta leader Min Aung Hlaing has said that elections will go ahead in August 2023, he needs to make them undemocratic so that the USDP wins. Progressive voice says that Min Aung Hlaing is already laying the groundwork to legitimize power that he has been unable to establish through his bloody coup attempt, by consolidating control of the military-established and military-run political party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). Meanwhile, the National League for Democracy (NLD) Party leaders are imprisoned while members and supporters are being abducted, tortured and dumped on the street. Min Aung Hlaing is setting a path where he becomes President after a junta-run election that he claims will take place in August 2023 – an election that the NLD has vowed to boycott. No amount of political maneuvering or sham elections by the junta will legitimize the violent coup attempt and the atrocities that the military is committing against the Myanmar people. As the National Unity Government’s (NUG’s) Acting President, Duwa Lashi La commented, the country must go beyond opposing the 2023 election and expel the Myanmar military from politics altogether. The USDP is the political party that was formed by, and serves as, a vehicle for the Myanmar military to remain in power through the retired military personnel who are its representatives and members of parliament, while the military itself already holds 25% of the seats in parliament. The rule that the military must hold 25% of the seats in parliament is part of the 2008 military-drafted constitution that the junta is keeping. That 2008 constitution has already been declared nulled and void by the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw – the body of elected lawmakers from the 2020 election, and the NUG. In the last two general elections in which the USDP competed against the widely popular NLD – 2015 and 2020 – it has lost miserably. Clearly, the USDP cannot win an election unless the NLD, or any other popular party championing democracy, is either banished or boycotts the elections. Read more at: https://www.mizzima.com/article/myanmar-junta-making-preparations-sham-elections
