RANGOON (AFP) - The opposition party of Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is expected to announce its return to the official political arena on Friday after years of marginalization by ruling [totalitarian] generals.
Senior members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) are to gather in Rangoon to decide whether to re-register as a political party, after boycotting elections last year -- the first to be held in Burma for 20 years.
- US Campaign for Burma
- AUDIO: Burma to Chair ASEAN (The World.org)
- Burma calls for sanctions to be lifted (WSJ), which explains why the military is making a show of treating Suu Kyi well.
Democracy in Burma? The US military would sooner force our version of democracy on Afghanistan through the barrel of a gun -- as Family Guy's Stewie and Private Brian find.
The NLD won a landslide victory in polls in 1990 but the win was never recognized by the then-ruling [military dictatorship] junta.
The party refused to take part in last November's vote mainly because of rules that would have forced it to expel imprisoned members. Suu Kyi was under house arrest at the time.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has spent most of the last two decades in detention, was released a few days after the polls and now appears to be planning an entrance to the mainstream political process.
"On the whole I think the great majority of our people will go in for re-registration," 66-year-old Suu Kyi told the BBC on Thursday. More
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