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Posts Tagged ‘2008 Constitution’ (102 found)
As 2014 Comes to an End, Students Hold Key to New Chapter in Burma Politics
As we count down the remaining days of 2014, Burma Partnership takes a look back at what 2014 has offered. It has been nearly four years since President Thein Sein’s administration took office, and now is the time to digest all the developments during his presidency, to assess what the so-called reform process has really meant for the people of Burma thus far. And now is the time to properly examine this new political landscape and to determine who is who.
By the time the reforms were announced, everything was already set in motion to ensure that the reform process was controlled and manipulated by members of the old military regime. Looking at the notorious 2008 Constitution, the institutionalized prescription of 25 per cent of the seats in Parliament for military representatives, the dominance of the Union Solidarity and Development Party, the excessive power of the Burma Army and the National Defense and Security Council, and the growing investment of the State and affiliated business cronies in the media sector, it is not hard to conclude that a new system of repressive governance has been installed – by the same people who were once considered one of the most brutal and authoritarian regimes in the world.
However, it is important to remain hopeful. Although the new political landscape has contributed to the sophistication of old problems and the development of new problems, it has also offered Burma people new opportunities. One of the most inspiring aspects of the political developments in 2014 has been the reinstatement of the role of student unions in the country’s political affairs. Burma’s students were always at the center of major democracy movements throughout history – most notably in 1988 – and have now made a comeback. […]
• • •Coalition of 18 Community-based Social and Political Networks Release Findings of Public Opinion on Village Tract Administrative Laws
Action Committee for Democracy Development (ACDD), a coalition of 18 community-based social and political networks, released a report presenting the findings of a survey of public opinion on the Ward and Village Tract Administrative Laws today in Yangon to members of political parties, Members of Parliament, civil society organizations and the media. The laws were approved on 24 February 2014 and 28 March 2012 respectively […]
• • •Constitutional Stalemate Sinks Hopes of Genuine Democracy and National Reconciliation
On Tuesday 18 November, Parliamentary Speaker of the lower house of the Burma Parliament Thura Shwe Mann boldly announced – to everyone’s great frustration but no one’s great surprise – that there would be no amendments made to the controversial 2008 Constitution before the 2015 national elections. So, what are the implications of this announcement, and why is the timing significant?
The implications for democracy in Burma are threefold. First, unless Article 59(f) is amended, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will not be able to lead her NLD party and run for President in the 2015 elections. Although many have long feared the worst, thus far hope has persisted, especially in light of the NLD’s highly successful campaign in favor of constitutional amendment, which attracted five million signatories in support. However, Thura Shwe Mann now seems to be calling time on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s political career – and the dreams of so many long-suffering and long-hopeful Burmese – smoothly but ruthlessly side-lining her until such time as she can safely be labeled a political irrelevance, and dumped for good. At the same time, his comments can be interpreted as an oblique, discreet and wily announcement of his own ambitions for a tilt at the presidency next year.
Second, without a significant overhaul of the 2008 Constitution to ensure that the rights, autonomy and self-determination of ethnic minority nationalities are respected and enshrined in law, the peace process does not stand a chance. Fighting rages on in Kachin State – not to mention in northern Shan and Karen State – with no sign of abating. The day after Thura Shwe Mann made his announcement, 23 Kachin and other ethnic nationality soldiers were killed and as many as 15 wounded when Burma Army troops fired on a military training base in Laiza, the strategic headquarters of the Kachin Independence Army. […]
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ျမန္မာနုိင္ငံ ေက်ာင္းသားလူငယ္မ်ား ကြန္ဂရက္၏ အ႒မအႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ ညီလာခံ ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္
၁။ ျမန္မာနုိင္ငံေက်ာင္းသား လူငယ္မ်ား ကြန္ဂရက္၏ အ႒မႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ ညီလာခံကို ၂၀၁၄ ခုႏွစ္၊ ႏို၀င္ဘာလ(၂၀) ရက္မွ (၂၂)ရက္ထိ (၃)ရက္တာ ထိုင္း-ျမန္မာနယ္စပ္ တေနရာတြင္ က်င္းပျပဳလုပ္ ခ့ဲသည္။ ညီလာခံသို႔ ကြန္ဂရက္အဖဲြ႕၀င္ အဖြဲ႕အစည္း(၁၁)ဖြဲ႕မွ ညီလာခံ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ မ်ားႏွင့္ ေလ့လာသူ အပါအ၀င္ စုစုေပါင္း(၃၉)ဦး တက္ေရာက္ ခ့ဲၾကပါသည္။ […]
• • •Activists Call for Constitutional Change to Empower Women
Burmese women’s rights advocates added their voices to the contentious debate on amending Burma’s Constitution this week, urging charter changes to promote gender equality during the Beijing+20 regional review forum held in Bangkok.
Burmese women’s representatives, both from the government and civil society organizations, as well as exiled women’s activist groups, attended the Asia-Pacific Conference on Beijing+20 in the Thai capital from Monday to Thursday. The Beijing+20 gathering offered a review of Asia-Pacific countries’ progress on women’s empowerment and gender equality. […]
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Are You Listening, President Obama?
US President Barack Obama’s made his much-anticipated second trip to Burma last week during the 25th ASEAN Summit, amid growing awareness that the reforms which he so eagerly celebrated during his 2012 trip are quickly unravelling – or being exposed for the stage-managed charade that they are.
In 2012, it was all too easy to trust the reform process. National elections had been scheduled for 2015, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had been freed from house arrest and elected to Parliament, political prisoners had been released, a nationwide ceasefire process was underway with the majority of armed ethnic groups, and restrictions on media and civil society had been drastically loosened. And so the US and the international community embraced the reforms.
Yet, last month, in her recent address to the UN General Assembly, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Burma Yanghee Lee warned of the risks of backtracking. Then, earlier this month, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi labelled the process as “stalled” and remarked that “there have been times when the [US] government has seemed over-optimistic about the reform process.”
Furthermore, there has been a flurry of recent calls from civil society across Burma, directly raising their various concerns about the reform process with President Obama. The Karen Human Rights Group wrote an open letter drawing President Obama’s attention to human rights violations resulting from the ongoing government military presence throughout south-eastern Burma; […]
• • •Open Letter to Mr. Barack Obama President of United States of America
We are writing to you to inform you about current situation in Myanmar and the reality on the ground from the perspective of young people. Allow us to get straight to what we want you to know. Current reform in Myanmar is fake. Changes that have happened are cosmetic to please the international community to attract investments to get the old regime out of economic isolation. We do not believe this reform process is going to take us anywhere because the motivation for reform is insincere. We want genuine democracy and national reconciliation […]
• • •Letter to President Obama
Dear President Obama,
We are writing on behalf of Kachin Society from Myanmar and abroad, composed of (27) organizations and networks.
We would like to welcome your administration’s courageous step in engaging with the Myanmar government, including your visit in 2012 and your delivery of the important speech at the University of Yangon. It resonates with us to this day. […]
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