RANGOON, Burma - Burma will hold by-elections later this year to fill 28 unoccupied parliamentary seats, its top election official said Thursday, letting contending parties test the political waters about a year ahead of the next general election.
The chairman of the Union Election Commission, Tin Aye, announced the timing in response to a question from a member of the parliament’s lower house. He said the polls would be held after monsoon season, which ends in October. The exact date will be set three months before the vote.
The by-elections should indicate the strengths of the ruling, army-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party and the opposition National League for Democracy party led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the two main parties expected to contest the general election in late 2015.
Suu Kyi’s party boycotted the 2010 general election as undemocratic but participated in April 2012 by-elections, winning 43 seats out of 45 seats at stake. She agreed to take part after President Thein Sein’s reformist government changed the election law.
Former Gen. Thein Sein took office as an elected prime minister in 2011, after almost five decades of military rule. However, the military is allotted a fixed percentage of seats in the legislature, giving it veto power over the administration of the country.
The military-guided constitution also contains clauses that would bar Suu Kyi from becoming president, and for that and other reasons, some legislators are seeking to have it amended.
The legislature comprises 224 members in the upper house and 440 members in the lower house; 25 percent of the seats in each body are occupied by military appointees. Burma has 65 political parties, but only a handful have representatives in the parliament.
Burma is often called Myanmar, a name ruling military authorities adopted in 1989. Suu Kyi and other regime opponents refused to adopt the name change, as have the U.S. and Britain.
Front Section, Pages 10 on 03/21/2014