YANGON, Aug 28 : Myanmar lawmakers on Friday held their last meetings at parliament as the body was suspended ahead of crucial general elections set to redraw the former junta-ruled nation's political landscape.
The combined houses of parliament will reconvene only after the November 8 vote, the first nationwide poll in a quarter of a century to be contested by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's hugely popular National League for Democracy (NLD).
"There will be no legislative meetings before the election in November," Soe Yin of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) told AFP, adding that parliament would only reconvene in an emergency.
Under Myanmar's electoral system the current parliament will still be active until the end of January 2016, when it will hand over to a new legislature that then selects a president.  Suu Kyi is barred from the top political job by the constitution, drafted by the country's former junta rulers, who kept her locked up for some 15 years as they tried to quash the democracy movement.      ?AFP