Buthidaung: Over 500 residents of urban wards in northern Arakan's Buthidaung Township in western Burma were unable to exercise their franchise in Sunday's election, the first nationwide polls in 20 years, after their names were deleted from the voters list by the Election Commission.

U Tun Aung Thein, a candidate of the RNDP contesting for state parliament in Constituency 2 in Buthidaung, told Narinjara that most of those who were excluded from the voters list were from Ward No. 4 and 5 in Buthidaung.

"More than 500 people, especially from Ward No. 4 and 5, were unable to vote in the election as their names were not in the voters list of any polling station near their ward. We found some of the family heads were listed, but other family members - wives, sons, and daughters - who were also eligible to vote, were missing from the lists. There were also whole families missing from the voters list at the polling stations in their wards," said U Tun Aung Thein.

He said that residents of the wards had complained to the RNDP, as they are also supporters of his party.

"As they are supporters of our party, our party informed the township election commission of the error as soon as we received their complaints and requested they be allowed to vote at the polling sites in their ward. About 50 of them were allowed to cast votes, but many others left without voting because the polling stations closed at 6 pm," he said.

He added that there were similar problems being reported from rural areas as well, and the number of eligible voters removed from the list could be much higher than 500 across the whole township.

The ethnic Arakanese party RNDP is the main opponent to the regime-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party in Arakan State. The party fielded two candidates - one for the People's Parliament and another for the state parliament in Buthidaung Township in northern Arakan.

According to local sources, there are nearly 150,000 eligible voters in Buthidaung Township, and five political parties - the Union Solidarity and Development Party, the National United Party, the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party, the National Democratic Party for Development, and the Khami National Development Party - as well as one independent candidate contesting the election.

At the time of writing this story, the election results from the township were unavailable. Sources from the township, however, suggested that the USDP and the NDPD will be the major vote winners from the township, as the USDP has used all possible means to garner votes in the election, and the NDPD is a Muslim party competing in the Muslim-majority township.

Sources added that the USDP also cheated to gain most of their votes by working with supervisors of polling sites in rural areas such as Kakyaphak and Ngakyintauk Villages in southern Buthidaung Township, in one case even allowing an individual to cast five separate ballots.