The daughters of two former prime ministers are aiming to join a new political party that is being set up to take part in next year’s elections, organizers said on Tuesday.
The planned Democratic Party will be established by a veteran politician once the ruling junta passes a party political registration law for the polls scheduled for some time next year.
Than Than Nu, 62, a daughter of the nation’s first prime minister, U Nu, said she would be the general secretary of the party.
She returned from India in 2003 after leaving the country with her parents in 1969. Her father led the then-Burma after it won independence from Britain in 1948, serving three separate terms. His final spell in government came when he was overthrown in 1962, starting a period of military rule that continues to this day. He died in 1995.
“We decided to take part in the coming elections as it is a chance for us and we expect to serve the country,” Than Than Nu said.
Nay Yee Ba Swe, a daughter of the second prime minister Ba Swe, and Cho Cho Kyaw Nyein, a daughter of a late former deputy prime minister, would also join the party, organizers said.
Ba Swe served from 1956 to 1957 in between U Nu’s first and second terms.
“We have no right to say anything officially about the party as we have no party registration law and election law yet,” said veteran politician Thu Wai, 77, who will be the chairman of the party.
“But we took this risk as we wanted to serve the people. We will not have much time after they announce the laws,” he said.
Myanmar’s junta announced that it would hold elections next year after approving a controversial constitution in May last year.Critics say the polls are a sham designed to legitimize the junta’s iron grip on power.
The National League for Democracy of pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has not said whether it will participate in next year’s polls. It won the 1990 elections, but was not allowed to take office.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS