Yangon – A breakaway faction of Myanmar’s main opposition party expected to field more than 100 candidates in the November 7 election, the party chief said Wednesday.“I think we will field over 100 candidates nationwide,” National Democratic Front (NDF) chairman Khin Maung Swe said. Myanmar’s junta recently announced the creation of 330 political constituencies.

The NDF is a breakaway faction of the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, which has decided to boycott the polls this year. Khin Maung Swe is to preside Thursday over the opening of his party’s second office in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second biggest city.

“We expect to do the best in Yangon and Mandalay,” Khin Maung Swe said.

He said it was too early to say whether the polls would be “free and fair” in the military-run country although he complained of the high cost of registering candidates and of his party events being dogged by security personnel.

Each candidate must pay a 500,000-kyat (500-dollar) registration fee, deemed a huge amount in a country where minimum wage is about 30 dollars a month.

Myanmar election authorities have so far permitted 40 parties to register to contest the general election. Seven others that have applied are still under the scrutiny of the Union Election Commission, state-run media reported Wednesday.

Myanmar last held a general election in 1990, which the NLD won by a landslide. The ruling military junta, however, has blocked the NLD from power.

The party decided to boycott this year’s polls to protest election regulations that would have forced it to throw Suu Kyi out of the party to qualify as a contestant.

The regulations barred anyone currently in prison from being a member of a political party. Suu Kyi is now serving her latest sentence, an 18-month house detention period that was expected to expire on November 13 or November 27, depending on when authorities decide her term began.

Few observers expected the polls to bring drastic changes to Myanmar, which has been under military rule since 1962.

A clause in the new constitution allows the military control over any future elected government by making the upper house of the National Parliament a partially junta-appointed body with veto power over legislation.