Myanmar May Postpone Landmark November Poll Due to Floods

Yangon: Myanmar's election commission held a meeting on Tuesday with major political parties to discuss the postponement of a historic election set for Nov.8 due to flooding, a government official and a politician present at the meeting told Reuters.

Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) is expected to win the poll, which marks a major shift in Myanmar's political landscape, giving the platform to democracy activists shut out of public life during nearly half a century of strict military rule that ended in 2011.

The election commission invited 10 parties to the capital, Naypyitaw, on Tuesday morning and asked them whether they wanted to postpone the election due to the worst floods to hit the country in decades.

The NLD opposed the move, while the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party was in favour of postponing the poll, the two people said.

"We invited political parties to get their opinions. The main reasons are the current natural disasters and unstable situation in the country," Zeyar Maung, an official at the Union Election Commission headquarters, told Reuters.

"It is still undecided yet whether to postpone the election."

More than 100 people have been killed and more than 1 million "critically affected" by the flooding in recent months, according to the government and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

It is the worst natural disaster in Myanmar since Cyclone Nargis killed nearly 140,000 people in May 2008.

Win Htein, a senior NLD official who attended the meeting, told Reuters the election commission planned to publish an announcement on the issue "soon".