Myanmar junta promises constitution in two months

Myanmar junta promises constitution in two months

By Marwaan Macan-Markar BANGKOK: Myanmar’s military rulers had a surprise in store for the over 1,000 delegates who had gathered for the latest session to draft the country’s new constitution. It should finish in two months, the South-east Asian nation’s information minister Brig. Gen. Kyaw Hsan said in remarks to the media ahead of the formal discussions getting underway, according to Myanmar’s journalists the news agency spoke with. The sense of finality at Wednesday’s announcement was rare considering that the process has come to be known as one of the world’s longest constitution-drafting exercises — now extending over 14 years and six months. It comes a month after the country’s acting Prime Minister Thein Sein broke with tradition to declare that the constitutional talks beginning in mid-July will be the final session of the National Convention (NC), the body tasked by the junta to draft Myanmar’s third constitution. But this sudden change of tune does not mean that the march to create a democratic culture with free and fair elections is about to end, said Myanmar watchers based in neighbouring Thailand in interviews with the news agency. Nor, they add, does it give hope that the political reforms to reduce the junta’s iron grip on power in the country are in the offing. “This timeline may be new, but there is no timeline given for the other six steps that the junta said had to be followed as part of its roadmap to democracy,” says Zin Linn, a spokesman for the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB), the country’s democratically-elected government forced into exile. “It is all part of the sham; this is a fake constitution. They could finish at anytime they want.” Others, like Aung Zaw, contend that the latest development had little to do with a change of heart within the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the official name of the military regime. “China has had a role to play in pushing the SPDC in this direction,” says the editor of ‘The Irrawaddy’, a current affairs magazine produced by Myanmar’s journalists living in northern Thailand. “It is worried that further delay will cause instability, which China does not want, due to its interests in Myanmar.” Human rights groups have warned that the outcome of the NC would trigger instability along the country’s borders, home to many of Myanmar’s ethnic communities that have suffered under military repression. It follows from the new constitution confirming the regime’s greater hold on power at the expense of ethnic groups who participated in the NC to secure peace and more political autonomy for their regions. “The generals who run Myanmar have trumpeted the convention as a vehicle for a return to civilian rule and the rule of law,” says Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, a global rights lobby, in a statement released on Wednesday. “But they have engineered the outcome to ensure the military remains in control and exclude the people of Myanmar from the process.” —Dawn/The IPS News Service