YANGON — The National League for Democracy issued an official statement on Friday claiming that party leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is the sole official spokesperson on matters of party policy and the political transition to the next government.
Issued at 4pm on Friday, the brief notice, posted on the NLD’s official Facebook page appeared to offer a rebuke to those who had been making announcements on the party’s behalf, without explicit reference to any individual.
“This is the time that NLD is taking carefully in transition period,” it read. “So the NLD would like to announce that there is no person can speak about NLD policy and transitional affairs except the chairperson of the NLD, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.’
The edict comes two days after NLD spokesman and central executive committee member U Nyan Win told AFP the party had finalised its choice of speakers to preside over the next Union Parliament in Nay Pyi Taw, when new lawmakers take their seats on February 1.
U Nyan Win told AFP that NLD MP-elects Win Myint and Win Khaing Than would be respectively nominated as speakers for the Lower and Upper House, while lawmakers from the Rakhine National Party and Union Solidarity and Development Party would be nominated as deputy speakers.
Fellow NLD executive committee member U Win Htein declined to confirm U Nyan Win’s comments on Thursday, telling the Popular News Journal that the party was still considering its appointments.
Apart from occasional press conferences, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has kept local media at arms length since her release from her third and final period of house arrest in 2010. The party issued orders forbidding its candidates from speaking to media outlets during the election campaign last year, and questions to individual party members are usually referred to the central executive committee.
Both U Nyan Win and U Win Htein have in recent years handled most media enquiries directed to the NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
