Burmese Prime Minister and retired Lieutenant General Thein Sein yesterday registered the regime-backed Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA)  as a political party to contest in the forthcoming election, according to military-run Myanmar Television.

The move came after his resignation along with 22 other ministers in the cabinet from their military posts on Monday.

The state-run television said, "The Union Solidarity and Development Party led by Premier Thein Sein and 26 other members, has submitted an application for registering as a political party with the Union Election Commission."

The military regime, the State Peace and Development Council, founded the USDA as a social organization in 1993. According to official data released in 2007, there were 14 state and division-level branches, 66 district-level branches, 320 township-level branches and 24 million members in total in the organization.

Sources in western Burma's Arakan State told Narinjara that the organization has opened village-level branches composed of at least 15 to 30 members in each branch in all township of the state since last year.

Official sources said that when Thein Sein met military and other departmental officials during a visit to Arakan in March, he urged them to work for the successful completion of the regime's seven-point political road map, in which holding elections was the last point.

Meanwhile, the regime's Union Election Commission has approved the Mro and Khami National Solidarity Organization's application to function as a political party and contest the election. The organization is one of the old political parties and the first to apply for official status in Arakan State. The Mro and Khami National Solidarity Organization won a seat in the 1990 election and supported the regime's political road map during the Nyaungnhapin National Conference that convened in 1993.

On the same day it granted the MKNSO official political party status, the Election Commission announced that it received an application from another party in Arakan State, the Rakhine State National Force Party.

The regime's media said that there are now six parties out of the 22 that applied, which have already been approved, and the remaining organizations are still being scrutinized by the Election Commission.

The National League for Democracy, which recorded a landslide victory in the 1990 elections, along with most of the old political parties, has boycotted the regime's election, stating that the election is a sham and is neither free nor fair, but rather designed to prolong the military's stranglehold on power. Burma has been under successive military rule since 1962.