Despite her run for office, Suu Kyi says she won't vote

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Despite her run for office, Suu Kyi says she won't vote

The Associated Press Published Monday, March 12, 2012 9:19AM EDT

Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, wearing the traditional Mon dress, delivers a speech during her election campaign rally in Mawlamyine, Mon State, Myanmar, Sunday, March 11, 2012.

Text:

YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will not vote in upcoming byelections despite running for a seat in parliament, an official with her party said Monday.

Even though Suu Kyi will be running for her National League for Democracy in the southern Yangon district of Kawhmu on April 1, she won't vote there because she does not live in the district, party spokesman Thein Oo said.

Thein Oo said that in order to register to vote in Kawhmu, Suu Kyi would have to change her home's registration from where she lives now in a central district of Yangon, a complicated procedure.

The decision not to register in Kawhmu does not affect her candidacy, which has already been approved by the election commission.

There is no byelection in Suu Kyi's home district, so she won't vote at all.

Suu Kyi, a former political prisoner and 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, had earlier said that it would have been the first time in her life that she could freely cast her ballot. In the 1990 general election, she voted from house arrest, and her party boycotted the country's next poll, in 2010, protesting that it was unfair.