Several Burmese weekly publications are carrying an identical article accusing the National League for Democracy, or NLD, of using the Committee Representing the People’s Parliament, or CRPP, as a “weapon.”
The article appears under the nom-de-plume Maung Pyi Thu (“A citizen”). “Many journals were forced to run these identical reports,” a publisher told The Irrawaddy by telephone from Rangoon.
The article accuses the NLD and the CRPP of being unreasonable with the government and warns that CRPP could be closed down for operating as an outlawed organization.
The warning was described as a “threat” by Fu Cin Sian Thang, chairman of the Zomi National Congress and an ethnic member of the CRPP.
“The NLD is using an unlawful organization like the CRPP as a weapon,” the article charges. The CRPP’s attempt to get a parliament convened and to organize an interim government is “irrational”, the writer says.
The CRPP has been calling for a parliament to assemble and to work as a legislature until it is properly convened.
The CRPP was established by the main opposition group, the NLD, and by a number of smaller, ethnic-based political parties in September 1998, after the ruling junta continued to refuse to recognize the results of the 1990 general election.
The CRPP has the support of 251 elected members of the parliament that should have been convened after the election.