Myanmar News Articles: Myanmar Charter Bar a Dilemma for Suu Kyi Party: Southeast Asia

Aung San Suu Kyi's quarter-century
quest to lead Myanmar is running out of time because of a legal
roadblock, posing a dilemma for a party that was forged around
the mystique of the Nobel Peace Prize Winner.

With elections due late next year, Suu Kyi's National
League for Democracy may win the most seats in a national poll
for the first time since 1990, when the military refused to
recognize its election win and kept Myanmar in isolation for
another generation. Even so, the NLD has been unsuccessful in
efforts to amend a constitution that bars Suu Kyi, 69, from the
presidency because her two sons are British.

A parliamentary committee dominated by the military and the
quasi-civilian government that come to power in 2010 recommended
in June to preserve the part of the charter dealing with the
presidency. That leaves the NLD and its aging leadership with a
choice: Continue pushing for Suu Kyi to lead or forge a path in
which the party is no longer centered on one person, a shift
that may expose internal weaknesses and dissent.

"I sense that Aung San Suu Kyi would not be happy to step
aside and allow another NLD candidate to be proposed," said
Derek Tonkin, a former U.K. Ambassador to Thailand, Vietnam and
Laos who is now on the board of Bagan Capital, a Myanmar-focused
advisory firm. "The NLD is Aung San Suu Kyi's creation. Without
her, the various components of the League would be likely to
split and go their separate ways."

Photographer: Soe Than Win/AFP/Getty Images

Senior party members won't speculate on who could step in
for a woman who spent 15 years in detention and is simply known
as "The Lady," saying their focus is on efforts to amend
Article 59(f) of the charter, which keeps her from the highest
office, as well as broader sections they consider undemocratic.

No Competition

"There is no one who will succeed her," Win Htein, one of
15 members on the NLD's central executive committee, said in an
interview at his home in Yangon, surrounded by photos of himself
and Suu Kyi. "Her status is so high and no one can compete with
her integrity."

He said it was "impossible" to get the necessary 75
percent of lawmakers to agree to change the constitution when by
law the military is guaranteed 25 percent of seats in
parliament. Still, he said the party will do what it always has
in the face of adversity: try harder.

"It will give us strength," said Win Htein, who spent 20
years in prison under the former junta. "It will become an
issue for the coming election because of the government's
unwillingness to change that clause, it is for the people to
struggle more and to support us more."

Photographer: Ye Aung Thu/AFP/Getty Images

Tough Transition

The transition from democracy icon to politician has raised
challenges for Suu Kyi, who along with her party re-entered
politics by contesting parliamentary by-elections in 2012, said
Robert Taylor, a visiting fellow at the Institute of Southeast
Asian Studies in Singapore.

"People admire her principled stands, her willingness to
stay under house arrest and all that, but also they see what's
happened to her since she's become the world celebrity," said
Taylor, author of "The State in Myanmar." "Living the life of
Riley and traveling the world, skipping parliamentary sessions
when they're supposed to be meeting to legislate, not ever
actually asking a question in the parliament. What's she do?"

Suu Kyi has faced international criticism for not being
vocal enough about the treatment of the Rohingya, a stateless
minority in Myanmar's west who aren't recognized as citizens or
an ethnic group by the government. She has also come under fire
at home, including when villagers near a copper mine berated her
on a visit aimed at persuading them to stop fighting for its
closure.

'Presidential Fever'

Thein Nyunt, a member of the NLD for 22 years who split
with the party when Suu Kyi called for a boycott of the 2010
election, accuses her of having "presidential fever" without a
strong record of developing policy proposals in parliament. Now
a lawmaker with the New National Democracy Party, he said the
NLD's reliance on Suu Kyi will ultimately harm it.

"The NLD is going to face a very big problem within a
decade," he said. "A party that relies on a personality cult
is not good for the party's future."

Nyan Win, a member of the NLD's central executive
committee, doesn't agree that the party has focused too much on
changing Article 59(f), which bars people whose immediate family
members are foreign citizens from being president. "It's
important also, just like other sections."

He said the central executive committee, along with Suu Kyi
as party chairwoman, meets every two weeks on policy. If Suu Kyi
disagrees with committee members -- the youngest of whom is 62 -
- they discuss the issue before reaching a decision.

Young Leaders

The party's greatest challenge is finding new leaders,
which is why the NLD created a youth congress, he said. "We
need young leaders of the party," said Nyan Win. "We are
old."

Age isn't the only obstacle the NLD faces. With many of its
senior members having spent years detained by the junta, it
lacks experience.

"What's missing most for the NLD is capable people and
expertise on certain issues," said Kyaw Lin Oo, the executive
director of the Myanmar People Forum Working Group, which
organizes workshops to discuss issues such as human rights.
"They might have educators or medical doctors, but they don't
have public policy experts, they don't have international
relations specialists, they don't have overall strategic
thinkers for the party to move forward."

Other Parties

Win Htein said the party acknowledges its inexperience in
some areas. "We NLD leaders are very tough," he said. "We can
face any difficulty, whether it is getting arrested or locked
up. But in the long run it is very difficult to lead a
government when we are not prepared and we have a deficiency of
qualified leaders."

The party would be ready to "invite anybody" to join an
NLD government, including former members of the military and the
current ruling party, "if they are sympathetic to our political
program." He said the NLD would also be open to a coalition.

The NLD is working to address its shortcomings, including
its reliance on Suu Kyi, said Sean Turnell, an associate
professor of economics at Macquarie University in Sydney who has
traveled to Myanmar to conduct seminars for the party and
advised the U.S. Congress on the country.

"Prior to say a year, year and a half ago, I think one
could have some doubts about knowledge of the way things work,"
said Turnell, the author of "Fiery Dragons: Banks, Moneylenders
and Microfinance in Burma." "They've made extraordinary
efforts over the last year particularly to really train a
younger cohort of people up at all sorts of levels."

'More Normal'

Even so, the international community is "coping reasonably
well" with the current government, and Suu Kyi not becoming
president could be a positive development, said Tonkin, the
former ambassador.

"Suu Kyi has always been very much part of the problem,"
he said. "She does not heed advice, is a bad listener and
demands total obedience," he said. "Without Suu Kyi, there
would be a more normal relationship between Myanmar and other
countries."

To contact the reporters on this story:
Chris Blake in Bangkok at
cblake28@bloomberg.net;
Kyaw Thu in Bangkok at
kthu1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Rosalind Mathieson at
rmathieson3@bloomberg.net
Tony Jordan

http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/myanmar-charter-bar-a-dilemma-for-suu-kyi-party-southeast-asia/

Myanmar News Articles

Monday 4 August 2014

Myanmar Charter Bar a Dilemma for Suu Kyi Party: Southeast Asia