News Digest

Myanmar president opens unprecedented talks with Suu Kyi and army

Myanmar President Thein Sein opened unprecedented talks with army top brass and political rivals including Aung San Suu Kyi on Friday, as U.S. President Barack Obama called for “inclusive and credible” elections in the country next year. Thein Sein and Suu Kyi walked into the meeting together to begin talks that are the first of their kind in the nation as it moves to emerge from decades of outright military rule. The meeting in the capital Naypyidaw comes a day after the White House said Obama spoke to Thein Sein and Suu Kyi about the polls, less than a fortnight before the U.S. leader visits Myanmar.

[Obama] underscored the need for an inclusive and credible process for conducting the 2015 elections [during telephone talks].

White House statement

Last week Myanmar authorities announced the country’s landmark elections would be held in the last week of October or the first week of November 2015. Myanmar’s last general election in 2010 was marred by widespread accusations of cheating and were held without Suu Kyi, who was kept under lock and key until days after the vote, or her National League for Democracy (NLD) party. In 2012 by-elections Suu Kyi’s party won almost every seat available and she become an MP for the first time. The NLD is now expected to win a major slice of the legislature in the 2015 vote after which parliament will select a president. But the 69-year-old veteran democracy activist, who spent more than a decade under house arrest during the junta years, is currently barred from taking the top job by the constitution.