By Joshua Carroll
YANGON, Myanmar
Myanmar’s long-awaited general election will be held Nov. 8, marking what is due to be its first credible poll for 25 years, the country’s Union Election Commission announced Wednesday.
The election will be considered a milestone in the democratic reform process of President Thein Sein, who replaced the military junta in 2011 promising to free political prisoners, liberalize the media and fix the economy.
But critics say the elections cannot be considered free and fair because the military still retain a quarter of all seats in parliament, and recently helped shoot down a motion aimed at making them relinquish some of that power.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is also barred from becoming president after the poll because of a clause in the constitution that says the country’s leader cannot have foreign relatives. Suu Kyi’s two sons are British.
Her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), is widely expected to win the polls. The last time the NLD contested an election was in 1990, following mass pro-democracy demonstrations. The NLD won by a landslide, but the ruling junta ignored the result.
In 2010 Thein Sein’s USDP party won a majority in what was considered a rigged election. The NLD boycotted that poll.
Campaigning for the Nov. 8 vote will begin in early September.
