With the Election Commission of Burma having turned down the approval of the main Kachin political party, ethnic Kachin people have no favourite party to vote for in the November 7 elections, said sources in the Kachin community.

Lack of approval of the Kachin State Progressive Party (KSPP) led by senior Kachin politicians, has led to voters in the country’s northern Kachin State losing out on the chance to vote for the party they wanted to in the ensuing elections, residents of Kachin’s capital Myitkyina said.

The 2008 constitution guarantees that the military rulers will legitimize their rule but Kachin people would have liked to vote for the KSPP, according to Kachin community leaders in the two main cities--- Myitkyina and Bhamo.

The junta and as a consequence the EC suspected the KSPP of having tenuous links with the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), which rejected the junta’s order to surrender weapons staring September 1. As a result the KSPP has been denied a chance to be in the election fray by the junta-controlled EC.

In Kachin State, most government employees, workers and the public at large do not want to vote for the junta’s proxy, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and the Unity and Democracy Party of Kachin State (UDPKS) led by Hkyet Hting Nan, a former member of the USDP, said a Kachin community leader in Myitkyina.

The UDPKS is also viewed as a proxy of the military junta because all the party leaders are former members of the junta-sponsored USDP, and the party is into election campaign financed by the military rulers and the USDP.

“I am upset. I decided to vote for Dr. Tu Ja’s KSPP but it was not approved by the EC. Now, I will vote for the National Unity Party (NUP) rather than the USDP and UDPKS,” a store owner said.

The KSPP was floated by retired KIO officers and the party is spearheaded by former KIO Vice-president No. 2 Dr. Manam Tu Ja.

The party made three fervent appeals to the Union Election Commission based in Naypyitaw the country’s capital, for approval. The appeals were ignored by the EC.

Had the KSPP been approved it would have given the junta-sponsored USDP a run for its money at the state level because the party had meticulously mobilized the people in the state, according to local Kachin community leaders.

Politically, the KSPP has the support of the KIO because it aimed to contest the polls at the state level competing against the junta’s USDP, said KIO officials.

Two smaller Kachin parties--- the United Democracy Party-Kachin (UDPK) led by Layawk Ze Lum, former general secretary of the New Democratic Army-Kachin, which was transformed to the Burmese Army-controlled Border Guard Force, and Northern Shan State Progressive Party (NSPP) did not get approval from the EC either.

Earlier, the KIO and the Kachin people had thought that if the KSPP won more seats in the state, it could have had the opportunity to resolve the political imbroglio between ethnic Kachins and the majority Burman-led government a step at a time.