Aung San Suu Kyi files to run in November elections

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi filed her certificate of candidacy on Tuesday at the district election commission office in Thanlyin township just outside Yangon, the country's biggest city.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy announced last month that she will be running during the November general elections in the Kaw-Hmu constituency, the same district where she ran in the 2015 elections.

Suu Kyi was barred from becoming president by a clause in the constitution that was enacted under a previous military government.

The post of state counsellor was created by her party as a workaround, giving her executive powers, and she also holds the position of foreign minister.

Suu Kyi led her party to a landslide victory in the last general election in 2015.

The victory ended more than five decades of military rule and was the culmination of over 25 years of non-violent democracy activism by Suu Kyi that won her the Nobel Peace Prize.

However, her failure while in power to end military abuses of the Muslim Rohingya minority in the western state of Rakhine drew condemnation from many of her former admirers worldwide.

An estimated 740,000 Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh, and the World Court in the Netherlands has accepted a case of  genocide filed against Myanmar.

Suu Kyi nonetheless remains by far the country's most popular politician, while prejudice against the Rohingya remains pervasive in Myanmar.

The continuing influence of the military under the constitution has limited her government's ability to enact major reforms.

The constitution gives the armed forces one-quarter of the seats in the lower and upper houses of the national parliament, enabling them to veto any changes to the charter.

The state Union Election Commission last month announced the Nov. 8 date for national, regional and state elections.