The military junta that took power in Myanmar in early February says on Friday that new elections must be held within two years.
The coup plotters say they have carried out a coup because last year’s elections would not have been fair. They immediately said that there should be new elections but did not indicate when before.
The coup followed Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy election victory in November. The ballot box turned out to be a failure for the party the military had counted on.
In Myanmar, then known as Burma, a military coup was staged in 1962 that allowed officers to establish a communist-style totalitarian state that has only slowly become freer since the end of the last century.
The ‘Privy Councilor’ with which the military-ruled was only dissolved in 2011.
In 2015, Aung San Suu Kyi won free elections and then led the government until this year’s coup. She has been imprisoned. The soldiers bloody down the daily protests against the coup.
