Myanmar’s Election Commission to audit accounts of Suu Kyi’s party

Bangkok Desk, Feb 9 (EFE).- Myanmar’s Union Election Commission, formed by the military junta after last year’s coup, is investigating Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party, official media announced Wednesday.

The body, which is auditing all political parties, said that next week it will be the turn of the NLD and others based in Yangon, the military-controlled Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.

The commission, which has already looked at 67 parties, is inspecting membership and funds, including uses and origins, at the request of the military junta that took power on Feb. 1 last year, alleging fraud in the November 2020 elections under the elected NLD government.

Last July, UEC chair Thein Soe declared that, after reviewing the votes, 11.3 million – more than a third – were fraudulent, and that the general elections had not been fair nor free, so they annulled the results.

Previously, Thein Soe had directly accused the NLD and even publicly called for its outlawing and dissolution, as well as the criminal prosecution of its leaders.

On Monday, coinciding with the start of the investigation of the NLD’s accounts, the trial against Suu Kyi for alleged electoral fraud is scheduled to begin.

The elections had received the backing of international observers.

The Asian Network for Free Elections, which sent 24 observers to the elections, assured in its final report that the results at the polls, where more than 27.5 million votes were cast and in which the NLD swept, “were, by and large, representative of the will of the people of Myanmar” and it had “no concerns as to the integrity of the ballot counting process.”

The military coup plunged the country into a deep political, social and economic crisis, and spurred the formation of new civilian anti-junta militias that have exacerbated the decades-long conflict between guerrilla groups and the military.

At least 1,526 people have died in the crackdown by security forces since the coup, according to data from the Association for the Assistance of Political Prisoners, which also estimates more than 12,000 detained opponents.

Among the detainees is Suu Kyi, arrested in the first hours of the uprising, and who has so far been handed four sentences and a total of six years in prison, in addition to facing more than a dozen charges. EFE

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