The National League for Democracy (NLD) will not try register with the Myanmar junta as a political party.

The comment was made by U Tun Myint, a member of the NLD Central Working Committee after the second Interim Central Committee regular meeting on 21 March 2023.

He said: “We haven’t even thought about it. If the Military Council’s terrorist coup d’etat is illegal, then the Union Elections Commission (UEC) formed by it is also an illegal organisation. Thus, we won’t be registering. We don’t even need to think about it.”

The junta UEC opened registration for political parties for three months, beginning from 26 January. That should have meant that any parties wanting to register should have done so by 26 March, but the UEC extended the deadline until 28 March because of bank holidays.

Currently, only 20 political parties have registered with the UEC.

All political parties need to register by 28 March, even ones that were previously registered have to re-register.

Any parties that are not registered or re-registerd by then will be declared illegal and will have to dissolve.