by Keith Richmond
Burma’s military leader Than Shwe has announced that the country will hold its first democratic election for two decades later this year – and urged people to make what he called the “correct choices” when they come to put their marks on the ballot paper.
The election, if it goes ahead, will be the first in Burma since 1990 when the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Sui Kyi, won a landslide victory. The military junta simply ignored the result.
The general, who made his remarks in a message read out in the new capital Nay Pyi Taw to mark Independence Day, added that his government’s seven-stage road map was the “only way” for the country to move towards democracy.
Aung San Sui Kyi is still under house arrest and the NLD has not yet said whether it intends to contest the election. In its own Independence Day statement it drew attention to the “growing divide between rich and poor” in Burma and appealed for “transparent and sincere dialogue” towards national reconciliation.
