Election Commission keeps KSPP on tenterhooks

The Kachin State Progressive Party (KSPP) remains on tenterhooks, with Burma’s Union Election Commission (UEC) sitting on the approval. Following a second appeal, the party has been asked to wait.


The KSPP, which is keen to contest the elections, sent two delegates to meet UEC officials in Naypyitaw, the country’s capital on June 16, according to party officials in Myitkyina, Burma’s northern Kachin State. The party has been asked to await a decision.

Earlier, the KSPP was told the same thing by the UEC, when four party delegates led by Dr. Manam Tu Ja appealed to it for approval on May 7.


“They (UEC) should come out with what we still need to do, because there is no time,” said a KSPP member who recently met UEC officials.

The party was officially registered with the UEC on April 5. However, while the UEC has approved several political parties and allowed them to contest the forthcoming countrywide elections, the Kachin party is yet to be approved.

The reason for the dilatory tactics seems to be UEC’s belief that the KSPP has links with the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), which has rejected the junta-proposed Border Guard Force.

The KSPP is led by Dr. Tu Ja, retired Vice-President No. 2 of KIO, and most members playing a leading role are also retired KIO officials. The party, however, has said it has no link with the KIO now.

Lt-Gen Gauri Zau Seng, Vice-president No. 1 of KIO in his speech to tens of thousands of people including over 300 Buddhist monks in Kachin State urged them to vote for the KSPP. He was speaking at the 16th anniversary of the KIO’s ceasefire agreement with the junta on February 24 in Kasung Pa, near Namti town.

The UEC is also yet to approve two other political parties of ethnic Kachins --- the Northern Shan State Progressive Party (NSPP) and a party led by former officials of the New Democratic Army-Kachin (NDA-K).

“Not only the KSPP but also all other Kachin political parties are yet to be approved. They (Burmese generals) think we are all the same because we are all Kachins,” said another party member.

The KSPP was founded in early 2009 by the Kachin State Interim Committee (KSIC) with political support from the three largest Kachin organizations--- KIO, NDA-K, which recently transformed to the junta-controlled BGF, and Kachin Nationals Consultative Assembly (KNCA).

At present the party has 60 central committee members, 15 general party workers and over 2,000 party members.

The party has been into organizational activities since 2009 among the Kachin people before being approved. Now it has stopped all poll related activities for over a month.

No Kachin party has been approved by the UEC, while the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) is the only party, which is actively into election campaigns in Kachin State.