Sources close to the Union Election Commission (UEC) told DVB that independent and Labour Party candidates Tin Htoo Aung and Kyaw Thuya were “dismissed” after being accused of “unlawful associations” to banned groups. They will not be allowed to participate in the regime elections.
Tin Htoo Aung was a candidate for Rakhine Ethnic Affairs Minister and Kyaw Thuya was a Labour Party candidate for constituency 1 in Yangon Region.
A source close to the UEC told DVB on the condition of anonymity that the two candidates are accused of violating Section 10(M) of UEC Law for ties to the Arakan Army (AA) in Arakan State.
The source added that Kyaw Thuya was accused by supporters of the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) of supporting the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM). His Labour Party registered with the UEC in November 2023.
“Since this election is a sham one, orchestrated by the military regime, it’s not surprising at all that those who do not comply with them are somehow eliminated,” a former politician in Arakan told DVB. Tin Htoo Aung did not respond to a DVB request for comment.
Tin Htoo Aung is the chairperson of Yangon-based human rights group Arakan National Network (ANN). He was also a former political prisoner who served 33 years for protesting in the 2007 Saffron Revolution. He was released from prison in a 2012 regime amnesty.
A total of seven candidates, including two independents and one from the USDP, are competing for Rakhine Ethnic Affairs Minister in Yangon, which is responsible for issues relating to migrant workers from Arakan.
The UEC cited Section 8(d) of the Amyotha Hluttaw Election Law for her disqualification due to an undisclosed loan she allegedly owes to KBZ Bank. She was the first candidate to be disqualified by the UEC in the regime elections despite having served as regime Minister for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement from 2021-2023 before being reassigned the Minister for Hotels and Tourism.
Thet Thet Khine left her position in the National League for Democracy (NLD) party amid controversy to found the PPP in 2019. She ran as PPP leader in the 2020 elections, but her party didn’t win any seats in parliament.
People’s Party candidate for Constituency 1 of Yangon’s Thingangyun Township, Lwin Myint is under investigation by the UEC for allegedly using the word “revolution” during an election campaign video he shared to his social media account on Nov. 12.
A former political prisoner, Lwin Myint, spoke about his political career and family members’ involvement in the resistance to the military coup on Feb. 1, 2021. The UEC hasn’t announced if he will also be disqualified.
People’s Party founder Ko Ko Gyi is a former leader of the 88 Generation Students Group, formed after nationwide student-led pro-democracy protests in 1988 known as the “8888 Uprising”. He was rejected by the NLD party to be one of its candidates in the 2015 election.
The NLD party won back-to-back landslide election victories in 2015 and 2020, but was ousted in the 2021 coup. State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint have been held incommunicado by the regime, which seized power during the 2021 coup, ever since.
The UEC announced that nearly 90 political party candidates were disqualified on Dec. 10. Ko Ko Gyi told pro-regime media that an unspecified number of his party candidates were among those disqualified.
Fifty-seven political parties registered with the UEC and six of them, including the USDP, the PPP, and the People’s Party, will contest polls nationwide.
The ousted NLD party was dissolved by the UEC in March 2023 for not re-registering post-2021 coup.
The National Unit Government (NUG), a group representing elected lawmakers ousted in the 2021 coup, along with the Women’s League of Burma (WLB), an umbrella organization representing Myanmar women’s groups, have called on citizens to boycott and reject the regime elections.
The UEC stated that voting will take place in 274 out of Myanmar’s total 330 townships. But polls will not be held in 56 townships nationwide, while voting will only take place in urban areas in an additional 10 townships. Also excluded from voting will be residents in 161 wards and 2,770 village tracts, according to the UEC.
