Burma’s 2010 Elections: Implications of the New Constitution and Election Laws

A report that outlines the SPDC’s 2008 Constitution and the new Election Laws, as well as responses from inside Burma and internationally. Includes the Congress’ position on the elections and possible actions depending on the SPDC’s next steps.

Myths Vs Realities: Burma’s 2010 Elections

A paper that addresses some of the myths surrounding Burma’s 2010 elections and the 2008 Constitution.

Available in English and Burmese.

Analysis of the 2008 SPDC Constitution for Burma

Burma’s ruling junta, the SPDC, has decided to hold elections in 2010 to choose a civilian government under the 2008 constitution, which was adopted by force and fraud. Even if the elections are free and fair, the constitution will only allow for a partially civilian government rather than civilian rule.

International attention has focused most on the constitution’s mandate that the Tatmadaw will appoint 25% of the various legislative bodies. But there’s a much bigger problem: under the constitution, the Tatmadaw is not subject to civilian government, and it writes its own portfolio. It can do whatever it wants […]

ျပည္ေထာင္စုျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအမ်ိဳးသားညြန္႕ေပါင္းအစိုးရမွ ၆၂ ႏွစ္ေျမာက္ ခ်င္းအမ်ိဳးသားေန႕သို႕ ေပးပို႕သည့္ ဂုဏ္ျပဳသ၀ဏ္လႊာ

၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္ ေဖေဖၚ၀ါရီလ (၂၀)ရက္ေန႕သည္ မဂၤလာအေပါင္းႏွင့္ ျပည့္စုံေသာ (၆၂)ႏွစ္ေျမာက္ “ခ်င္းအမ်ိဳးသားေန႕”ျဖစ္ေပသည္။ ခ်င္းအမ်ိဳးသားမ်ား၏ ဤသမိုင္း၀င္ ေန႕ျမတ္တြင္ ခ်င္းအမ်ိဳးသားေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား၊ ခ်င္းေတာ္လွန္ေရးရဲေဘာ္မ်ားႏွင့္တကြ ခ်င္းတိုင္းရင္းသား ျပည္သူ တရပ္လုံး ကိုယ္စိတ္ႏွစ္ျဖာ က်န္းမာ ခ်မ္းသာၾကေစေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ ခ်င္းအမ်ိဳးသားတို႕၏ “ကိုယ့္ၾကမၼာ ကိုယ္ဖန္တီးခြင့္ႀကိဳးပမ္းမႈ” အျမန္ဆုံး ေအာင္ျမင္ပါေစေၾကာင္း ေလးနက္စြာ ဆုေတာင္းေမတၲာပို႕သ အပ္ပါသည္။ ျဗိတိသွ်နယ္ခ်ဲ႕သမား၏ က်ဴးေက်ာ္စစ္ (၃)ႀကိမ္ျပဳၿပီးေနာက္၊ အျခားတိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ား နည္းတူ၊ ခ်င္းတိုင္းရင္းသားတို႕လည္း နယ္ခ်ဲ႕ လက္ေအာက္ က်ေရာက္ခဲ့ရသည္။ ဦး၀မ္းသူေမာင္ အစရွိေသာ ပညာတတ္ ခ်င္းလူငယ္မ်ား၏ ဦးေဆာင္မႈျဖင့္ ၁၉၃၃ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ “ခ်င္းအမ်ိဳးသား မ်ား စည္းလုံးညီညြတ္ေရးအဖြဲ႕” ကို ဖြဲ႕၍ “ဒို႕ဗမာအစည္းအရုံး” ႏွင့္ ဆက္သြယ္ကာ၊ နယ္ခ်ဲ႕ေတာ္လွန္ေရးတြင္ ေရွ႕တန္းမွ ပါ၀င္ခဲ့ၾကသည္။ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္းအပါအ၀င္ […]

Burma’s 2008 Constitution: An Obstacle to Free and Fair Elections in 2010?

On February 18, 2010, the National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB) hosted an expert panel to address how the SPDC’s 2008 Constitution will serve as an obstacle to free and fair elections in Burma, as well as to democratic reform. Panelists Meghan E. Stewart, Esq., Professor David C. Williams, and Myint Soe discussed how a free and fair election is presently unattainable because the 2008 Constitution is inherently anti-democratic.[…]

Statement on the 47th Anniversary of Palaung National Revolution Day

# Today is an important day for the Palaung Nation because it marks 47 years of resistance against the dictatorship of the State Peace and Development Council.
# We appreciate and respect all those Palaung civilians, leaders, and comrades who have given their lives and blood for our struggle during the last 47 years.[…]

Impunity Prolonged: Burma and its 2008 Constitution

Civil society and international organizations should meanwhile develop a coordinated approach for gathering information about human rights violations in Burma, to help prepare for eventual prosecutions and other measures dealing with the military government’s long legacy of impunity. […]

2010 Elections: A Recipe for Continued Conflict

A briefer that shows how the regime’s preparations for the 2010 elections have already had serious human security impacts on the region – increased crimes against humanity and escalated armed conflict causing 43,800 refugees to cross over into China and Thailand within the last 3 months. It also outlines the serious flaws in the 2008 Constitution that will intensify the root causes of conflict that has plagued Burma. […]

Burmese Constitutional Referendum: Neither Free Nor Fair

The purpose of this report is to analyze whether the SPDC conducted the May 10th constitutional referendum in Burma in accordance with basic international standards for free and fair referendum processes. The report reviews basic standards for constitutional referendums and, using media and other reports, analyzes the administration of the referendum under those standards. The report finds that the referendum was not free or fair, as it was not conducted in accordance with international law or basic democratic standards.

The 2008 Myanmar Constitution: Analysis and Assessment

International constitutional scholar, Yash Ghai, presents an analysis of the SPDC’s 2008 Constitution.