Yangon, Jan 4 (DPA) The chief of Myanmar’s ruling military junta Monday instructed people to make “correct choices” in the general election planned for this year.
“Plans are under way to hold elections in a systematic way this year,” Senior General Than Shwe said in his Independence Day speech in Naypyitaw, the country’s capital, about 350 km north of Yangon. “In that regard, the entire people have to make correct choices.”

Myanmar was granted independence from Britain Jan 4, 1948. It was under democratic rule for 14 years before General Ne Win overthrew elected Prime Minister U Nu in a military coup in 1962. The country has been under military rule since.

Anti-colonialist rhetoric is still popular among the ruling generals.

“It is required of the entire national people to remain vigilant at all times against dangers posed by neo-colonialists and to make sustained efforts, putting the national policy in the fore and exerting patriotism for ensuring perpetuity of the motherland,” Than Shwe said.

He reiterated the regime’s intention to pursue its seven-step road map to democracy, which includes a general election sometime this year.

Myanmar last held an election in 1990, which the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party won by a landslide.

The military refused to pass power over to the NLD, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner and the daughter of independence hero Aung San, on the argument that the country needed a new constitution before civilians could rule.

The constitution was finally promulgated in 2008.

The NLD, which has not yet announced whether it would contest the 2010 polls, was planning its own ceremony marking Independence Day Monday in Yangon.

Suu Kyi has spent 14 of the past 20 years under house arrest. It was unclear whether the junta would free her and 2,100 other political prisoners prior to the polls, as called for by the international community.