Over 50 political parties are mulling over the constituting of observation and supervision committee for the Electoral Code of Conduct (CoC) issued on June 26 to be followed by the contesting parties and independents in the upcoming 2020 general elections set for November.

A group of political parties including te ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party which signed this CoC and agreed to follow the guidelines issued by the Union Election Commission (UEC) started their discussions at Malia Hotel in Yangon yesterday.

NLD party alternate Central Committee member Kyaw Hoe said, “This is the conduct for the parties. I don’t think there will be cancellation of the planned elections because the non-abiding of this conduct could lead to prosecution in either criminal or civil cases. And there will be other electoral misconduct cases.”

However, the main opposition Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and over 20 allied parties has refused to sign the electoral CoC at the signing ceremony due to a dispute of some points contained in it.

“As they said, it is up to each party. Some may sign and some may not. We must recognize their opinion on it. We don’t have any comment on their opinion. It mainly depends on the signatory of this conduct. The parties which agreed and signed on it will abide and exercise this CoC. We gave this opinion. The observation committee will be for abiding by this CoC among the signatories,” Kyaw Hoe added.

There will be no mutual intervention between this observation committee and UEC in the electoral process.  

A plan for the formation of this observation committee has been put forward to the UEC and the delegates were set to pass a resolution on assigning duties in this committee.

This observation committee will observe and monitor the abiding CoC by signatories of this CoC and their candidates in their election canvassing work.