Aung San Suu Kyi banned from elections. Called "a stooge...an agent of an alien nation in disguise'

The party would have to expel Suu Kyi if it decides to register at the election commission because political parties are prohibited from having a prisoner as a party member, according to the election law revealed on Wednesday.

The law may even force her to leave her own party which won a landslide victory in 1990 in the last democratic election in Burma, although the junta ignored the results and has remained in power.

Reading the latest grim news from the junta press

Not only is Suu Kyi not allowed to be a member of a political party member, she is also not allowed to lead any political party if the polls are held before her release from detention, according to the party registration law.

By May 7 the NLD must finally decide whether it will continue to exist as a legal party after twenty years of unsuccessful struggle against the military dictatorship.
"We have to expel our own leader from the party or face dissolution of the party after May 7," said Nyan Win, who is both party spokesman and the lawyer representing Suu Kyi.

An appeal of her latest conviction was rejected by the junta controlled Supreme Court two weeks ago. She is being punished for breaching the terms of her house arrest when she allowed an American man who swam across a lake and entered her home to stay overnight.

Religious officials and civil servants are also banned from party membership and ominously the government said more election laws will be announced in official newspapers in the coming days.

The junta has pledged to hold parliamentary elections this year, although a specific date has yet to be disclosed.

On Wednesday, the Burmese state-run newspapers carried comments by the regime's prime minister, Gen. Thein Sein, who alluded to Suu Kyi at a meeting in Shan State on Tuesday, saying: "No Burmese citizen could be a stooge or an agent of an alien nation in disguise of a Myanmar [Burmese]."