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YANGON (AFP) – Supporters of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Thursday accused former colleagues who are seeking to set up a new party of copying their symbol of a bamboo hat ahead of rare elections. Former top members of Suu Kyi's disbanded National League for Democracy (NLD) said they would lodge a complaint with the election commission in the capital Naypyidaw next week about the use of the image in an official seal. "We will denounce them for using the bamboo hat," said NLD co-founder Win Tin, noting that Suu Kyi's party had used the symbol during 1990 elections which it won but was prevented from taking power. "The whole country associates the bamboo hat with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD," he said. A group of former NLD members has applied for permission to form a new party -- under the name of the National Democratic Force -- to run in the country's first election in two decades, expected some time later this year. The NLD refused to meet a May 6 deadline to re-register -- a move that would have forced it to expel Suu Kyi -- and opted to boycott the vote, which critics say is a sham designed to legitimise the junta's half-century grip on power. Suu Kyi has been locked up for almost 15 of the past 20 years and is currently under house arrest at her lakeside home in Yangon. Analysts say that within the NLD there has been friction between older hardline members and younger more moderate figures who opposed the boycott decision. But Win Tin denied the NLD was divided, saying former members had the democratic right to create a new party. The election commission has said it will consider any complaints about the names, flags and seals of political parties seeking to register ahead of the polls.