MP in Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition party injured in sword attack

With the principal contenders in the election being the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi, ethnic parties are campaigning hard to take their constituencies and other minor mainstream parties offer an alternative choice.

But academic Jacqueline Menager said young people had “mixed feelings” about the country’s elections, but have embraced democracy in other ways. Suu Kyi has said that a civilian from the party will be up for the post shall the NLD win, although she has indicated she will lead the government from Parliament.

“If the USDP wins, all of us farmers will share peace and a better economy, everything will be ideal”, he said.

Not one of the NLD’s 1,151 candidates standing for regional and national elections is Muslim, despite there being around five million Muslims – or between 4 and 10 percent of the population – in the country. After many years overseas, she returned in 1988 to Myanmar, previously known as Burma, just as an uprising erupted against the military regime.

“It is relatively straightforward for the political elite to change a country’s political system; it is less simple to enact a cultural transition”, she said.

Supportersof Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi applaud… Minority ethnic parties will do well in their areas, but the sheer number of parties, and Myanmar’s complex ethnic mosaic, means that vote splitting will reduce their haul of seats.

Elated supporters, many clad in red T-shirts and bandanas bearing the party’s golden peacock logo, gathered before a stage next to a Buddhist temple in the east of the city waving flags and chanting “Mother Suu” for what observers say is the party’s largest rally so far.

“I love her. To write anything critical or negative about her, I have to think very carefully”, said Naw Ko Ko, a politics writer for newspaper The Voice.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the source said Suu Kyi ordered an “Islamic purge” in the National League for Democracy (NLD) to appease growing anti-Muslim sentiment fuelled by hardline Buddhist nationalists.

The junta stepped back from power in 2011 with the election of President Thein Sein, and the country has moved toward democratization, though the military still maintains a powerful position.

A Myanmar Times reporter estimated the crowd at about 40,000, making it the largest rally held by any party in the run-up to the November 8 vote.

The rally yesterday was originally set to take place near Yangon’s famed Shwedagon Pagoda at People’s Park, the location where Suu Kyi made her first public speech 27 years ago. But that is where the key challenge lies: the ethnic parties between them technically control 30% of the seats in parliament; but more importantly, the military has 25% of the seats in parliament reserved in perpetuity under the constitution.

The NLD won with a landslide despite the restrictions, but the military ignored the result of the vote.

As the face of the NLD, Suu Kyi has spent the past few weeks campaigning around the country, which has been slowly opening up to democracy after decades under a military junta. “If NLD members come to this house to campaign, I will slash them”, Htein Win said the notice read, describing it as a clear threat. Despite the NLD “purging Muslims”, the paranoid nationalist group often dubs Suu Kyi’s party the “party of Islamists”.

“We will try to win the election in the right way. You have to vote”, she told the crowd.

While the NLD is expected to sweep the polls, Suu Kyi is barred by the constitution from becoming president herself.

As the parliamen-tary election in Myanmar nears, there are differing forecasts about the performance of the two biggest parties. At least four people including a sitting parliamentarian were injured in an attack on members of Myanmar’s main opposition party during an election campaign in the commercial capital Yangon.