Suu Kyi party decries voter list 'chaos'

Kawhmu

 Aung San Suu Kyi Monday urged supporters to check their names on voter lists as her opposition party raised the alarm over "chaos" in Myanmar's electoral rolls just weeks before historic polls.

 Some 32 million people are eligible to vote in the November 8 parliamentary election, seen as a key test of democratic progress in a nation that only emerged in 2011 from a half-century of military rule.

 Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy is widely expected to defeat the military-backed ruling party but has raised growing concerns about the electoral rolls, which it says are riddled with errors.

 Speaking at her first campaign rally in her rural constituency of Kawhmu south of Yangon, the Nobel laureate implored local people to double-check their details on the voter lists.

 "If you are not included in the voter list, correct it. You still have time," she told throngs of supporters, many of whom wore their traditional ethnic Karen clothing and had plastered NLD stickers to their cheeks.

 Her comments came as Myanmar's powerful army chief said he would welcome the prospect of a female president -- words that will be little comfort to Suu Kyi, who is barred from the post.

 With the eyes of the international community on the election, poll authorities have vowed to ensure they are credible and voters have until October to amend any errors.

 But efforts to computerise electoral rolls have proved a major challenge for authorities, who have had to base their information on flawed and out of date official lists.

 "The voter lists are in a state of chaos," said the NLD's Tin Oo, at a press conference of senior party figures in Yangon on Monday, decrying an increase in errors since the last time the lists were put on display. 

 "It's questionable whether the upcoming 2015 (vote) will be free and fair," he added.

 The November election is meant to crown four years of remarkable change in the long isolated nation.

 But the army will continue to wield significant influence even if the opposition sweeps the polls because 25 percent of seats in parliament will still be reserved for the military.

 - Campaign message -

Suu Kyi appeared on national television late Monday to deliver a campaign message for her party, only the second time she has done so since she was freed from house arrest in 2010.

 She told voters the NLD was ready to govern.

 And she said that while the differences between her party and the army were well known, they were similar in their "willingness to build a bright future".

 In a rare interview with local and international media, army chief General Min Aung Hlaing said he had no issue with the formerly junta-run nation being led one day by a woman.

 "I welcome them. Whether man or woman to serve duty, I welcome them," he said at the meeting in a military compound in the capital Naypyidaw.

 But under a military-drafted constitution the country cannot be led by anyone with foreign-born offspring. Suu Kyi's children were born in the UK to a British father.

 Observers say the army is deeply wedded to its perceived role as protector of the Myanmar constitution, which was drawn up under a former military regime that suppressed all dissent and kept Suu Kyi under lock and key for some 15 years.

 The NLD has vowed to change the charter to reduce the army's role and overturn the provision which bans Suu Kyi from the presidency.

 The ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, an army proxy, swept flawed polls in 2010, unopposed by the NLD and Suu Kyi who was still under house arrest.

 A quasi-civilian government, which took power the following year, introduced a series of rapid economic and political reforms after decades of isolation and poverty under the military.

 But Suu Kyi, who entered parliament in 2012 as MP for Kawhmu, has warned that the reforms have stalled.