Burma’s Supreme Court has refused to hear democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawsuit against the junta for dissolving her party ahead of elections, an official in the army-ruled country said on Monday.
“The case was rejected by the Supreme Court in Naypyidaw,” a government official, who did not want to named, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) was disbanded for boycotting the November 7 vote in response to rules that seemed designed to bar the dissident from taking part.
Her legal team said it would discuss its next move with the Nobel Peace Prize winner.
“We have to see whether we can go for a special appeal to take it further,” said one of her lawyers, Kyi Win.
Low success rate for opposition
Court verdicts in the army-ruled country rarely favour opposition activists.
Suu Kyi, who co-founded the party, unsuccessfully filed an earlier lawsuit with the Supreme Court aimed at preventing its abolition.
Her lawyers filed the second suit on her behalf in October, aimed at reversing the dissolution.
Burma’s courts also rejected a series of appeals against her house arrest before it expired just over a week ago, resulting in her release after seven straight years of detention.
The NLD was founded in 1988 after a popular uprising against the military junta that left thousands dead. Two years later the party won elections in a landslide but the results were never recognised by the regime.
This month’s election, the first since the 1990 vote, has been widely criticised by democracy activists and Western governments as a charade to create a facade of democracy after almost half a century of military rule. — Sapa-AFP