Myanmar's military government has dissolved the ousted ruling party of former leader Aung San Suu Kyi and 39 other parties, state media announced on Tuesday, over their failure to register for an election set to prolong the army's grip on power.
The National League for Democracy (NLD) is among dozens of parliamentary parties that were severely weakened by the military's 2021 coup against Suu Kyi's elected government and its crackdown on protests against its rule.
The polls, for which no date has been announced, will come amid a deepening crisis in Myanmar, where the military is fighting on multiple fronts to crush ethnic minority armies and a resistance movement formed to counter its lethal suppression of anti-coup dissent.
In a live broadcast late on Tuesday, state-run Myawaddy TV said 63 parties had registered at local or national level and named 40 parties that were automatically disbanded for failure to sign up by Tuesday's deadline.
The election is almost certain to be swept by the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), a military proxy that was trounced by the NLD in the 2015 election and in a 2020 vote that the generals eventually voided, citing unaddressed irregularities.
The hugely popular Nobel laureate Suu Kyi, 77, is among scores of NLD members jailed since the coup and is serving 33 years for multiple counts of corruption, a breach of a state secrets law and incitement, among other crimes.
Tun Myint, a senior NLD official, said the party would never have registered for the polls with many of its members in jail or "involved in the revolution."
