Myanmar Court Sentences Suu Kyi To Three Years In Prison For Voting Fraud

A court in Myanmar has sentenced the country’s ousted leader; Aung San Suu Kyi to three years imprisonment after finding her guilty of involvement in election fraud. The ruling adds more jail time to the 17 years she is already serving for other offenses prosecuted by the military government.

The latest verdict also carries potentially significant political consequences for Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party by lending support to the government’s explicit threats to dissolve it before a new election the military has promised for 2023.

Suu Kyi’s party won the 2020 general election in a landslide victory. But the military seized power from Suu Kyi’s elected government on February 1, 2021, saying it acted because of alleged widespread voter fraud.

Independent election observers say they did not find any major irregularities.

Two senior members of Suu Kyi’s former government were co-defendants in the case and also received three-year prison sentences.

Some critics of Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who led the takeover and is now Myanmar’s top leader, believe he acted because the vote thwarted his political ambitions.

A spokesperson for the Bangkok-based Asian Network for Free Elections, a non-partisan poll-watching group, said Friday they did not observe any election fraud.

“Domestic election observers from Myanmar also did not see that,” Amaël Vier told The Associated Press. “There were improvements to be made for sure — we were still coming from a long way behind other democracies, in Myanmar –- but the claims of the junta that 25% of voters were fraudulent? This does not hold up to our scrutiny, for sure.”

The military’s seizure of power prompted widespread peaceful protests that were quashed with lethal force, triggering armed resistance that some U.N. experts now characterize as a civil war.

Suu Kyi’s supporters and independent analysts say all the charges against her are politically motivated and an attempt to discredit her and legitimize the military’s seizure of power while keeping her from returning to politics. All her trials have been held in closed courts.

Friday’s ruling by the special court at the prison in the capital, Naypyitaw, was conveyed by a legal official who insisted on anonymity for fear of being punished by the authorities, who have restricted the release of information about Suu Kyi’s trials. He said all the defendants appeared in good health.

Ousted President Win Myint and the former minister of the president’s office, Min Thu, both co-defendants in the election fraud case, each received sentences of three years. All three received prison terms with labor, a category of punishment that can include hard labor, such as road building, but in this case, does not, he said. Lawyers will file appeals in the coming days.

The election fraud charge against Suu Kyi was filed in November by the Election Commission, whose members were replaced by the military after it seized power. It charged that Suu Kyi and her colleagues violated provisions in the constitution by allegedly influencing the old commission.

The military-appointed commission accused them of being “involved in electoral processes, election fraud and lawless actions” related to the election. The commission claimed it has found more than 11 million irregularities in voter lists that could have let voters cast multiple ballots or commit other fraud.

Thein Soe, the new Election Commission chief, has said his agency would consider dissolving Suu Kyi’s party, charging that it had worked illegally with the government to give itself an advantage at the polls.

Many top members of Suu Kyi’s party and government are in hiding or have fled abroad.