Burma unable to secure polls in Kachin State, officials say
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Naypyitaw - Burmese officials acknowledged Wednesday that authorities could not guarantee security in Kachin State, where voting for the weekend's by-election has been postponed.
"Authorities from grassroots level said that they could not fully guarantee security there," Union Election Commission Chairman Tin Aye said of three constituencies in the Burma's northernmost state.
There has been constant fighting betweenthe army and Kachin insurgents since June, displacing up to 75,000 civilians and sparking humanitarian concerns about the remote area.
Sunday's by-election will be contested by prominent democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi, 66, who has been campaigning for her National League for Democracy (NLD) party since mid-February.
Even when Suu Kyi campaigned in the Kachin State earlier this month, "security measures were only available in towns, not in villages," Tin Aye told a press conference in Naypyitaw, 350 kilometres north of Rangoon.
The postponements leave 45 seats up for grabs on Sunday, left vacant when the new cabinet members took up their positions, and with NLD candidates running for all but one of them.
Together they represent 9 per cent of the 500 seats in Burma's three houses of parliament.//DPA
