Aung San Suu Kyi to be barred from party and polls

I / Yangon March 10, 2010, 13:40 IST

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi faces expulsion from her own party and is barred from standing in polls this year under the military junta's new election laws, a spokesman said today.

In a move that sparked outrage from rights activists, the regime said in the new political parties registration act published today that anyone serving a prison term cannot be a party member for the polls.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), which won the country's last elections in 1990 but was stopped from taking power by the military would in turn be abolished if it failed to obey the rules.

The Nobel Peace laureate was sentenced to three years in jail in August over an incident in which a US man swam to her lakeside home. Suu Kyi's sentence was commuted by junta supremo Than Shwe to 18 months under house arrest.

"I have noticed that we have to expel Daw Suu. Their attitude is clear in this law," NLD spokesman Nyan Win told AFP, using a respectful form of address to refer to Suu Kyi.

"I was extremely surprised when I saw this, I did not think it would be so bad."

Critics have dismissed the polls, which Than Shwe has promised to hold at a still unspecified date this year, as a sham aimed at legitimising and entrenching the military's nearly five-decade grip on power.