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BURMA
Burma Begins New Era as Suu Kyi Becomes MP
NLD chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi takes her place in the Burmese Parliament on Wednesday. (Photo: Irrawaddy)
NAYPYIDAW—Aung San Suu Kyi completed her historic journey from political prisoner to parliamentarian on Wednesday, assuming public office for the first time in a risky new strategy to work alongside Burma’s new reform-minded government after her 25-year struggle against military rule.
The session on Wednesday cements a detente between Suu Kyi’s party and the administration of President Thein Sein, which came to power last year after the nation’s long-ruling army junta stepped down. Some analysts see it as a gamble in which the opposition could end up bestowing legitimacy upon a regime that needs Suu Kyi to end years of isolation from the West and get lingering sanctions lifted.
The 66-year-old democracy leader will have almost no power in the assembly, but she’ll nevertheless have an official voice in the legislative branch for the first time and the chance to challenge public policy from inside the halls of power.
Suu Kyi’s parliamentary debut comes after her National League for Democracy NLD party lost its first major political battle since this Southeast Asian nation’s April 1 by-election—a bid to change the lawmakers’ oath.
The NLD had refused to take its seats in the assembly last week because they opposed wording in the oath that obliges legislators to “safeguard” the constitution. The party, which has vowed to amend the document because it enshrines military power, wanted the phrasing changed to “respect.”
Their failure to push through even that small change, though, underscores the immense challenges ahead in a nation still dominated by the military. On Wednesday, Suu Kyi and several dozen of her party brethren chose to compromise for now—jointly reciting the oath in the capital, Naypyidaw, as the ruling party and the army looked on.
Mobbed by reporters after the ceremony, Suu Kyi said she would not give up the struggle she has waged since 1988.
“We have to now work within the parliament as well as outside the parliament as we have been doing all along,” she said.
The legislature itself was installed after a 2010 vote that the NLD boycotted and the international community decried as a sham. Now, as a parliamentary minority occupying only a few dozen seats, the NLD will have little power to change what it wants to change most—the Constitution, which allots 25 percent of assembly seats to unelected military appointees.
Asked if it would be awkward sitting alongside the army, Suu Kyi said she has “tremendous goodwill toward” the soldiers.
“We would like our Parliament to be in line with genuine democratic values. It’s not because we want to remove anybody,” she said. “We just want to make the kind of improvements that will make our national assembly a truly democratic one.”
Thein Sein’s government has been widely praised for instituting sweeping reforms over the last several months, including releasing hundreds of political prisoners, signing cease-fires with rebels, easing press censorship and holding the April 1 by-election that allowed Suu Kyi’s party to enter parliament.
But more than half a million refugees remain abroad, hundreds of political prisoners are still behind bars and fierce fighting continues with ethnic Kachin insurgents in the north.
Maung Zarni, a Burmese exile who is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, said Suu Kyi’s ascent is “neither a game-changer nor a sign that Burma has reached the tipping point of democratic transition.”
“Quite the contrary, it marks the most important victory [yet] for the regime’s strategic leaders,” he added.
Suu Kyi’s rise to public office marks a major reversal of fortune for a woman who became one of the world’s most prominent prisoners of conscience, held under house arrest for much of the last two decades. When the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner was finally released in late 2010, few could have imagined she would make the leap from democracy advocate to elected official in less than 18 months.
Soe Aung, a spokesman for the Thailand-based Forum for Democracy in Burma, said little would change for ordinary people but they “have much hope in her and her party.”
Over the next three years, the NLD will have to decide how to navigate the run-up to the next national elections in 2015, which they are widely expected to win in a landslide—just as they did in 1990 when the army annulled the result.
Soe Aung said Suu Kyi will use her time in Parliament to “expand the space of the opposition” by working to win over the ruling party as well as the military, and trying to convince them she is not a threat.
It is a strategy of realism, he said, because Suu Kyi knows “that without the support of the (the army), they will never be able to bring about changes in the country, the genuine changes that people would like to see.”
The army’s representatives wield enormous power. Changes to the Constitution require a 75 percent majority, meaning that doing so is all but impossible without military approval.
Maung Zarni said the most crucial test will come in three years time.
“It remains an open and serious question whether the military as an institution or the generals and ex-generals will stomach the idea—much less the reality—of a landslide by Aung San Suu Kyi and her party in 2015,” he said.
“But three years is a long, long time,” he added. “There is nothing irreversible about Burmese politics.”
Today is the D-day for Burma, because it is a victory that ASSK step in side parliament. The day will come majority of parliamentarian will support her to change the undemocratic constitution, even most of the goernment’s MPs and military selected MPs will support her views in a short time. Just wait and see. Ther is a Burmese saying
” Amhan tayar yuaklar – yin, Amhar tayar pyauk – yamei” mean when rightness appears, the wrongness goes away.
Finally she is become surrender in the magic trap.
Watch out generals, The (Iron) Lady is in town and she’s ready to dance with the wolves.
She’s armed but only with a roadmap for the rule of law, reconciliation with ethnic minorities, and bringing just a touch of democracy and decency to a constitution hopelessly skewed to perpetuate military rule under the guise of a civilian government.
But that’s the only game in town, and half (?) a loaf is better than none. Besides, time and age are not on the democracy leader’s side.
Congratulations, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy on this historic occasion. We hope that you and your party will meet with success in working hand in hand with President U Thein Sein as the country now turns over a new leaf.
The military-backed government has over the past 2 years learnt much from China. Over the years, the developed democratic West has always thought that the developed can influence the developing and the underdeveloped by imposing western democracy ideologies on them.
The junta has mastered the art of handling these influences by adopting the same strategy adopted by developing countries like China.
The new order of the world is that the underdeveloped would emerge as the controlling factor rather than being controlled.
Now that the NLD had no choice except accept the oath of office under the heavy weight of influence, those responsible should rally behind them to provide them the firepower to pursue the cause of true democracy instead of letting the Burmese government get its way of absorbing the NLD into their organization with a majority of military in Parliament under the protection and safeguard of the 2008 Constitution in a One Civilization, Two sides – Opposition and Military – Burma.
The hyena-esq crowd currently in Rangoon and this weirdly named Ne Pyi Daw and Thein Sein’s lot will change 2013 so different from 2012 that 2015 is unfathomable.
Even before the sudden and devastating unconditional endorsement the military by white flag waving NLD,most of the country has been sold off to the Chinese- dams, pipes, rails, roads, energy generation resource extraction- all designed for money making in China and Asia with some spill over for some segments of the people of Burma, and the same goes with Thailand and India.
With most liberal investment law where 100% foreign owned firms can take any land for 60 years with no tax payable for 5 year requiring to use manual labour of local work force as only “great” benefit for the people of Burma, it is no wonder that all the foreigners are stepping over each other in Burma along with their agents, like Ban Ki-Mon and Ashton.
The effect of NLD has thus far been simply keeping the public into doped state of euphoric suffering rather than better oppotunity or better economy.
More unfortunately NLD as well as majority Burmese consider the intense sufferings of the people in the North as inconsequential and unnecessary nuisance rather than the most grave and defining event of the country as it is.
She has already proved how myanmar love her since she had led the campaign, recall the 1990 victory and the days she was imprisoned. Daw Suu please, the old junta members are still remained in the parliament.You had survived an attempt once or multiple, be careful. Swun Arh Shin will be in every corner of Myanmar where UNDP present. Now, one in service entering the Hluttaw. They are above the LAW no matter the regime changed.
This is a small baby step, the grown up steps will be seen in the 2015 general elections, NLD has to dig in now and use the power of the press to increase political awareness among the general population, keep banging on genuine democracy and play the cards tactfully…at the same time find a way for the 25% to exit without them loosing “face”..
To sum up, one has to agree and endorse the good judgement and explanation presented by Maung Zarni and Maung Soe Aung.
ROUND ONE ALREADY for Than Shwe’s lackey (Thein Sein) of course.
Once she (Daw Suu) is in the TRENCH (parliament) there is NO WAY she can MAKE ANY HEADWAY given the CIRCUMSTANCES and SITUATION at hand as well.
PLEDGING TO SAFEGUARD Than Shwe’s constitution is certainly a STEP BACK no less.
PROFESSING ACQUIESCING/PLEASING POLICY SELDOM PAYS OFF lest Daw Suu forgets.
And JOINING the CLOWNS/PUPPETS as well at this time and juncture certainly is NOT ADVISABLE as well.
Of course there is a LONG WAY to GO yet no doubt.
And LEOPARDS DON’T CHANGE THEIR SPOTS they say.
Only PRAY Daw Suu could PAINT a DIFFERENT PICTURE at the END of the DAY FOLKS.
As HISTORY BECKONS, OBLIVION as well AWAITS IN THE WINGS.
Hence, BEST OF LUCK and MUCH LOVE for Daw Suu is ALL I CAN SAY!
Suu Kyi Becomes MP, if she could wait for 2 more years she will become a president of burma and she can do much more for the people. What can she do now? nothing, 70% of members are thein sein and than shwe people. Her voice will lost amotng them. She was in jail and also under house arrest for decades, I dont understand why she cant wait for a couple years more. May be she can but other NLD cant. To show as one voice to people, she has no choice but to go along with other NLD MPs who want to be in Parliment.