Jessicah Curtis
After nearly 14 years in the drafting, Myanmar’s ruling generals have announced that next month they will finalize a new constitution that, after a national referendum, will pave the way for a political transition from military to civilian rule.
For much of the past decade, Myanmar’s slow-moving constitution-drafting National Convention has been paid short shrift by the political opposition, which has openly chided the junta’s so-called “roadmap for democracy”. The announcement by the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) that the convention will reconvene for its final session on July 18 has sent shock waves through the pro-democracy movement, led by the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD).
The final draft of the long-awaited constitution is nearly complete, and for the first time the SPDC appears ready to take significant steps toward some sort of political transition where the military will maintain political control through civilian proxies. In that direction, reports have recently emerged that the SPDC has commenced construction on a big new parliamentary building in the reclusive new capital city, Naypyidaw.
Yet rather than moving toward genuine political reconciliation, as the United States, the European Union and the United Nations have all encouraged, news that the constitution is near completion has stirred concern rather than confidence among pro-democracy groups, which fear that they will be even further marginalized in the political transition.
Since its launch in 1993, the National Convention has been widely viewed as a convenient excuse by the SPDC not to hand power over to the NLD, which won a landslide election victory over military-backed candidates in 1990. The military later annulled the results and has since ruled the country with an iron fist.
Originally designed to lay down the “basic principles” for a new constitution, the convention was later repackaged as the first step on the junta’s “roadmap for democracy”, which was launched in August 2003 by then-prime minister Khin Nyunt. At the time, the SPDC claimed the roadmap would lead to a new constitution, free and fair elections, and a multiparty democratic political system.
Toward that end, the National Convention was reconvened in 2004 after an eight-year break instigated by the NLD’s unwillingness to participate in a process that it has continuously characterized as a sham. The international community has responded with similar skepticism and has called for a more transparent, inclusive process.
That clearly hasn’t been the case, with nine political parties and a number of key ceasefire and rebel outfits either uninvited or refusing to attend the National Convention. Many other political and civilian groups, including some that have participated in the constitution-drafting process, have said they are unhappy with the final draft charter now being circulated.
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That’s because the new charter includes various anti-democratic provisions and predictably is designed to secure a role for the military in Myanmar’s future “civilian” parliament. It also ensures that popular opposition politicians, including detained NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, will be legally excluded from prominent decision-making roles in the to-be-elected government.
For instance, the draft allots 25% of the seats in a future parliament to the military and prevents anyone with a criminal or prison record from taking on a legitimate political role. Since many of Myanmar’s pro-democracy candidates, including several leading members of the NLD, have spent time in jail, they will be barred from running for political office.
It also prescribes that the future president must have “political, administrative, military and economic experience”, and have lived in Myanmar for at least 20 years, and his or her spouses and children’s spouses must not be citizens of a foreign country. This provision has been clearly designed to rule out the possibility of Aung San Suu Kyi campaigning for the premiership.
Several other cabinet positions, including those of the ministers of defense, border affairs and homeland security, will by law be held by members of the military, and according to provisions in the current draft, the military can legally seize power at any time merely by declaring a state of emergency. The constitution also gives the army the right to full independence from parliamentary and public oversight.
Importantly, the final session of the National Convention next month will also finalize the guidelines for constitutional-amendment procedures - a provision that NLD members contend will be the key to the new charter’s eventual success or failure. “We are interested in this stage. If it can be possible to change [the constitution], then it will not be so bad for Burma,” NLD spokesperson U Myint Thein said, referring to the country by its previous name.
In previous drafts, the military has demanded that any constitutional amendments be tabled as parliamentary bills that must carry 75% support of the legislature, which the military will likely dominate through both its appointed and elected proxies. If passed, the amendments must then garner more than 50% of eligible voters in a national referendum.
If the draft constitution is finalized next month, the National Convention finally comes to a close and a national referendum is quickly held to ratify the new charter, where will it leave major opposition groups, such as the NLD and the armed insurgent groups that have been excluded from the drafting process? The short answer: in a tight political spot.
Sources along the Thailand-Myanmar border say that the military has recently taken steps to disarm a number of ceasefire groups with which the SPDC had brokered loose autonomy deals in recent years, including the Shan State Nationalities People’s Liberation Organization and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army. It appears that those ceasefire groups that did send delegates to the National Convention did not expect the constitution-drafting process to end so abruptly - nor were they prepared for the military’s recent moves to disarm their members.
Excluded from the constitution-drafting process, Myanmar’s various opposition groups likewise seem unprepared for the fresh political challenges posed by the new constitution and a military-led democratic transition that appears to be winning over significant international support. While the constitution still needs to be finalized, the move toward a limited form of democracy now seems inevitable and, according to one Yangon-based journalist, “caught the opposition with their pants down”.
“If the constitution goes to a referendum, then the next step will be a [general] election,” a source close to the military told Asia Times Online in a telephone interview. “How can the NLD run for election based on a constitution they didn’t ratify and when they still insist that the 1990 election results are right? They will have to choose between the 1990 election result and being a part of Myanmar’s political future.”
At the least, the charter’s completion and its promise of new general elections will provide a fresh challenge to the legitimacy of past political landmarks, including the annulled 1990 election results.
“You can go against something because it is unfair and unjust, but then it becomes a political reality, and what do you do?” asked Thailand-based Myanmar political analyst Aung Naing Oo. “What the military is preparing to say is that whatever happened in the past, it will be invalidated if the new constitution is ratified.”
Some analysts believe the military’s decision abruptly to wind down the National Convention and finalize the constitution was brought on by pressure from China. Some analysts note that the announcement came hard on the heels of Prime Minister Thein Sein’s recent China visit. More concretely, Beijing has recently become impatient with the military’s foot-dragging over a process that, once completed, would help to ease Myanmar’s political and economic isolation.
The UN, which helped broker secret national-reconciliation talks between the SPDC and the NLD in 2003 and has consistently pushed the junta to move toward more democracy, could be throwing its hat in with the SPDC’s plan. The United Nations Population Fund in Myanmar is helping the military government prepare for the country’s first national census in more than 20 years ahead of a national referendum. If that referendum leads to democratic elections, more international concessions could be in the offing.
