Space For Rent
Tuesday, February 2, 2016, Magh 20, 1422 BS, Rabius Sani 21, 1437 Hijri


New beginning in Myanmar
Published :Tuesday, 2 February, 2016,  Time : 12:00 AM  View Count : 34

Myanmar is certainly off to a new start in politics. Indeed, it can be said with justification that politics, in the sense we understand it in the modern world, has come to Myanmar after decades of being fugitive from it. For the first time since the coup d'etat carried out by General Ne Win in 1962, when he deposed the civilian government of Prime Minister U Nu, the country can look forward, cautiously of course, to being governed with the consent of its people. That is the encouraging part of the story. The sense of encouragement stems from memories of the long struggle the people of Myanmar, with Aung San Suu Kyi at the head, have had to wage to inaugurate a new day for themselves. One cannot easily forget the brutal manner in which the elections of 1990, which Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won with a landslide, were overturned and Suu Kyi and hundreds of others were pushed into incarceration. The military regime which took over from Ne Win in 1988 was surely different from the one which seized power in 1962 --- it was worse. And dearly has Myanmar paid for it.
For all the enthusiasm regarding the present turn of events in Myanmar, however, there are some serious apprehensions about the extent to which the NLD, whose lawmakers have just been sworn in, will be able to govern. A big problem relates to the presence of the military in parliament, where under the terms of the army-drafted constitution it holds twenty five per cent of the seats. On the face of it, that number will not prevent the NLD from forming a government. But it will surely be an impediment to any thoughts of constitutional changes Suu Kyi and her supporters might have in mind. A peculiarity of the constitution --- and the peculiarity was specifically designed to keep Suu Kyi from power --- is that it has no room for any politician whose children are foreign citizens to take over as the country's president. That is absurd in the extreme. Suu Kyi's sin, in the eyes of the army, has been her marriage to a British academic, the union leading to the birth of two sons who are British citizens. Obviously, it was blatant prejudice which guided the soldiers when they inserted such an outrageous provision in the constitution.
The provision needs to go, but exactly how that will be done will depend to a huge extent on the wisdom which both the NLD and the army can exercise toward that end. For now, the NLD must choose a successor to outgoing President Thein Sein, on whose watch Myanmar has progressed thus far in political liberalization. Suu Kyi has suggested that she will be above the president, which in the circumstances reminds one of the position of paramount leader in some communist nations in the past. A president beholden to Suu Kyi will in effect be a figurehead, which in the long run cannot be healthy for Myanmar. That is a good reason why the NLD and the army need to reach a deal on striking out the foreigner provision in the constitution.
Meanwhile, we wish the people of Myanmar well as they move to a new future. That future must ensure full democracy and unfettered respect for human rights. That last bit refers to the rights of Myanmar's Rohingyas to citizenship. Suu Kyi cannot look away from it.









Editor : Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury
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