The junta’s Union Election Committee (UEC) announced on Monday evening that the results of Myanmar’s 2020 general elections had been overturned.
The National League for Democracy (NLD), which won the majority of seats in the November 8 polls, rejected the decision.
“The people hired by the junta to act as the the ‘election committee’ have now insulted the people in the most vile way possible by ignoring not only the people’s votes, but also the existing laws,” Aung Kyi Nyunt, a central executive committee member of NLD, told Myanmar Now.
Myanmar’s military has repeatedly tried to justify their February 1 coup by claiming that voter fraud was perpetrated in the election which their proxy parties lost.
The move came five months after the military-appointed election commission chairman Thein Soe said in a meeting with political party representatives in Naypyitaw that the 2020 election results had been annulled.
On Monday, the UEC claimed that there were more than 11 million errors in the vote count, and accused the NLD of violating Covid-19 public health restrictions in an attempt to stay in power.
Aung Kyi Nyunt said that there is no evidence backing the military’s allegations.
“There has been solid proof provided by local and international monitoring organisations that the election results contained no error big enough to impair justice,” he explained.
Aung Kyi Nyunt is also the chairperson of the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH), which was formed by ousted lawmakers to defend the election results following the coup.
He explained that the NLD and CRPH were focused on raising awareness globally of what he described as the unlawful overturning of the election, but did not elaborate on the groups’ strategy.
The NLD won the majority of seats in the country’s general elections in 1990, but were barred by the military from taking power. The party again won and subsequently formed a government in 2015, but the military retained significant political power in accordance with the 2008 Constitution drafted by the army.
“People only cheat when they know they can’t win, or if they expect to lose. We had no reason to do so,” Aung Kyi Nyunt said.
Shortly after the February coup, the military council assigned ex-general Thein Soe as the UEC chair. In this role, he has been vocal about nullifying the 2020 election results and abolishing the NLD.
Thein Soe also oversaw the 2010 election, which was widely dismissed both domestically and internationally as being neither free nor fair, and in which the NLD and a number of other parties opted not to participate. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party subsequently won and formed the government, headed by another ex-general, Thein Sein.
