Suu Kyi Allies Plan to Take Myanmar Parliament Seats

Posters of Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi are sold at her party's Yangon headquarters Tuesday.

Leaders of two opposition groups in Myanmar said they intend to work with recently released democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi to challenge the country's ruling military regime but also plan to participate in the government's new parliament when it is formed, a decision that could lead to further divisions in Myanmar's opposition movement.

Ms. Suu Kyi's political allies encouraged opposition leaders to boycott the Nov. 7 election, Myanmar's first in 20 years, because they believed participation by any opposition figures would lend legitimacy to a process they say was designed to entrench Myanmar's military regime, which has controlled the impoverished Southeast Asian nation since 1962.

Supporters try to get close as Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi as she leaves her National League for Democracy's headquarters after meeting with ethnic leaders of her party in Yangon November 16, 2010.

Some dissidents, including a splinter group of Ms. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party called the National Democratic Force, contested the polls anyway. Some candidates advocated closer collaboration with the military regime, arguing that participating in the vote would at least give them a seat at the table once a new government was formed.

Opposition groups that took part in the vote fared worse than they had expected. Although the government has only gradually released results, state media have said the Union Solidarity and Development Party, considered a proxy for the regime, easily secured a majority in both houses of Parliament.

A leader of the National Democratic Force, the largest opposition party to participate, said it won just 16 of the roughly 1,150 seats at stake in Myanmar's national parliament and several regional assemblies. It contested 163 seats. A representative of the Democratic Party, one of the other main opposition groups in the polls, said it won only five seats out of the nearly 50 it contested.

It wasn't immediately possible to confirm the results with the Myanmar government. Repeated attempts to reach Myanmar officials, who rarely speak to the foreign media, have been unsuccessful in recent weeks.
Ms. Suu Kyi's release on Saturday, an apparent bid by the regime to curry favor with foreign leaders who have long sought her freedom, was hailed by human-rights advocates and residents who embrace her calls for Western-style democracy. But analysts have predicted Ms. Suu Kyi will have a tough time unifying an opposition movement that has become more fragmented since she last was placed under house arrest in 2003. Much of the debate within the movement revolves around whether to work with the regime and its new parliament or reject the election and call for an entirely new government.

"The election was a sham," said Cho Cho Kyaw Nyein, general secretary of the Democratic Party who ran—and lost—in the election. It "was definitely not fair," she said, citing widespread allegations of fraud, which the government has denied. Nevertheless, the party still plans to take its five seats and participate in the new government, she said. As for Ms. Suu Kyi, she said her party hopes to meet with her in the coming weeks to discuss whether Ms. Suu Kyi and the Democratic Party can work together.

"We are very friendly personally but when it comes to politics one never knows what she is going to do," Ms. Cho Cho Kyaw Nyein said. "Our goal seems to be the same, although we are walking in different paths."

Three days after her release, democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi begins the legal process to reinstate her party and meets with her supporters. Video courtesy of Reuters.

Khin Maung Swe, leader of the National Democratic Force, said he also thought the vote "was not a free and fair election." Still, "we will not boycott the parliament," he said, though he added the group also needs to meet with Ms. Suu Kyi before making final decisions on how to proceed.

Myanmar's military regime, which is accused of widespread human-rights violations, held the election as part of a "roadmap to democracy" aimed at boosting its legitimacy in the eyes of residents and the outside world. Ms. Suu Kyi's NLD easily won the country's last election, in 1990, but the military ignored the results. It imprisoned many dissidents and kept Ms. Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, in detention for more than 15 of the past 21 years.

Ms. Suu Kyi has indicated she wants her party to study reports of vote fraud but it isn't clear whether she will accept the new parliament. Nyan Win, a spokesman for Ms. Suu Kyi's political organization, said she was only "beginning" to look at the issue of how to work with the newer crop of political parties and could start meeting with them next week.