Junta’s NUP Ready to Open 2010 Election Campaign

By WAI MOE

The chairman of the National Unity Party (NUP), which replaced the Burma Socialist Program Party (BSPP), said this week the party is ready to start campaign efforts in the 2010 general election, according to the Rangoon weekly, True News.

In a front page report in the weekly on Tuesday, NUP Chairman Tun Yee was quoted as telling party members in an Independence Day message, “In 2009, our party will focus on political organization.”

It was the first time political campaign news about the 2010 election was published on the front page of a private journal, according to journalists in Rangoon. One journalist said authorities probably pressured the weekly to put the story in the publication.

However, a True News staff member who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that the weekly ran the story on its own.

He said there was no difficulty with Burma’s censorship board, the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division of the Ministry of Information.

Officials of the NUP were not available when The Irrawaddy tried to contact them on Wednesday.

The BSPP was organized in July 1962, four months after Burma’s first military coup which was led by Gen Ne Win, who went on to serve as BSPP chairman until July 1988.

The BSPP was abolished following the second military coup on September 18, 1988.

The NUP replaced it prior to the general election in 1990 when most BSPP members became NUP members. The NUP served as the proxy party for the military government during the national election campaign.

However, the NUP won only 10 parliamentary seats in the election. The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) won 392 seats out of a total of 485 seats. The NUP received more than 2 million popular votes, while the NLD received nearly 8 million votes in the election.

Meanwhile, many private Rangoon journals this week published an article attacking NLD members Win Tin and Khin Maung Swe, opposition leaders who were released in September after serving many years in the junta’s prisons as political prisoners. Journalists in Rangoon said authorities ordered private journals to publish the story.

The article claimed the two opposition members were behind a peaceful protest on December 30 seeking the release of NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi in which nine NLD members were arrested and detained.