Aung San Suu Kyi given 3 more years for 'election fraud'

A court in Myanmar on Friday, September 2, 2022, sentenced the country's ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to three years' imprisonment after finding her guilty of involvement in election fraud. [AP]

A court in Myanmar on Friday sentenced ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to three years imprisonment with labour after finding her guilty of election fraud, adding more jail time to the 17 years she is already serving for other offences 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 army seized power the following February and kept her from a second five-year term in office. The army contends it acted because of alleged widespread fraud in the polls though independent election observers did not find any major irregularities.

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 own 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," Amael Vier said. "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 per cent 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 UN experts now characterise as a civil war.

Suu Kyi had already been sentenced to 17 years in prison on charges of illegally importing and possessing walkie-talkies, violating coronavirus restrictions, sedition and five counts of corruption. Many top members of her party and government also have been jailed, while others are in hiding or have fled abroad.

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.