Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has stepped up her fight for victory as the election will arrive in less than a month: relentlessly urging voters to show up on the polling date, she wooed them with a wide range of promises.
Before large crowds at the party campaign last week in Kachin State – home to over 720,000 eligible voters, the chairperson of the National League for Democracy promised a clean government if her party wins the November 8 election.
In Mohnyin Township, she said: “Corruption occurs very widely in our country. We cannot make it vanish right away. But if NLD is able to establish the government, I guarantee it will be clean.”
Her party will contest the election with 1,130 candidates in 1,171 constituencies.
In Myitkyina Township, she met religious leaders and said: “If we win the election, we will welcome other parties to work together for national reconciliation. Bullying is unacceptable,” said Suu Kyi.
Peace required three steps, she added. It needed a ceasefire followed by a peace conference and a constitution to establish a federal union. She said that being excluded from peace talks meant it was important to show that the NLD supported the peace process. The NLD first needed to be elected to push for peace, she said.
Citing that the upcoming election is as important as the Panglong Agreement, she said the agreement shows working together is better than working separately.
Echoing the same message, while in Mon State, NLD patron Tin Oo said all ethnic groups have the right to equality. He guaranteed that all groups would have autonomy in their states.
While in Moemauk Township notorious for illegal logging, Suu Kyi promised transparent tax-collection system. Saying that under a democratic system, people enjoy more rights but that comes with duties, she said paying taxes is one of the duties. She also implied that natural resources extracting projects should be better regulated, assuming that all citizens are equal under the law.