YANGON, (Reuters) – Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will run in an upcoming by-election, a senior official in her party said yesterday, three days after her National League for Democracy ended its boycott of the country’s political system.
It will be the first time the Nobel Peace Prize laureate has competed in an election since 1990, when her landslide electoral victory was voided by generals intent on maintaining power.
“Aung San Suu Kyi intends to stand for the by-election but it’s a bit early to say from which constituency she will run,” Nyan Win, a senior official in her party, told Reuters.
Suu Kyi, the daughter of late independence hero Aung San and a staunch opponent of the military dictators who ruled Myanmar until nominally handing power to a civilian parliament in March, spent 15 of the previous 21 years in detention before her release from house arrest a year ago.
On Friday, her National League for Democracy voted unanimously to register the party, which was officially dissolved last year by the then military regime.
Suu Kyi had previously not indicated whether she herself was interested in becoming a member of parliament, but her decision comes after Myanmar won a powerful endorsement on Friday when U.S. President Barack Obama announced Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would visit the resource-rich country neighbouring China, citing “flickers of progress”.
Clinton will be the highest-ranking American to visit the former British colony since a 1962 military coup. On her two-day visit early next month she plans to meet with Suu Kyi and has said credible elections are one condition for ending U.S. sanctions, along the release of more political prisoners and peace with ethnic minorities.
The NLD, Myanmar’s biggest opposition force, won the 1990 election but the country’s military refused to cede power and for the following two decades suppressed the party’s activities, putting many of its members in prison.
