{"id":170886,"date":"2015-11-27T00:38:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-27T05:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kanglaonline.com\/?p=81024"},"modified":"2015-11-27T00:38:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-27T05:38:00","slug":"has-power-gone-to-suu-kyis-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/2015\/11\/27\/has-power-gone-to-suu-kyis-head\/","title":{"rendered":"Has power gone to Suu Kyi\u2019s head?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Nehginpao Kipjen<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

The National League for Democracy (NLD) chairperson Aung San Suu Kyi on November 19 met representatives of more than 50 countries, including Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Norway, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.\u00a0 After waiting for 25 years since her party\u2019s electoral victory in the 1990 general election was annulled by the military government, Suu Kyi is convinced that her time has come to lead Myanmar.\u00a0 In conjunction with her political ambition, Suu Kyi took steps not to antagonise the majority voters of the country, who are predominantly Buddhists. She not only maintained silence on human rights violations against the country\u2019s minority Muslims, but her party avoided fielding Muslim candidates.\u00a0 As a politician, Suu Kyi\u2019s electoral strategy worked well in her favour, much better than many analysts had predicted before the election.<\/p>\n

As the NLD prepares to form the next government, there are some concerns. One major concern is the possible confrontation between NLD and the military, which still remains a powerful force and essential element in the country\u2019s polity.\u00a0 Before the election, Suu Kyi said \u201cIf we win, and the NLD forms a government, I will be above the president.the constitution says nothing about somebody being above the president.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 In response, Zaw Htay, a senior official at the President\u2019s office, said Suu Kyi\u2019s comments were \u201cagainst the constitutional provision\u201d which states that the president takes precedence over all other persons.\u00a0 After the election on November 10, the NLD leader continued to say that the president \u201cwill have no authority, and will act in accordance with the decisions of the party…because in any democratic country, it\u2019s the leader of the winning party that becomes the leader of the government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suu Kyi\u2019s pre and post election remarks unequivocally show that she is keen and ambitious to lead not only her party but also the next government. Since NLD now has majority seats in both houses of the parliament, the party is in a position to elect the president and one of the two vice-presidents. The participation of NLD in the 2015 general election means that the party has agreed to respect the 2008 constitution, which protects the inherent role of military in politics. There is no doubt that Suu Kyi would act with due diligence not to provoke the military leaders. And at the same time, she will play more or less the role of Sonia Gandhi during the Congress-led government in India.<\/p>\n

However, there is a danger that the military may find it difficult to tolerate should the country president becomes a puppet of Suu Kyi. If such situation arises, the military will target the president for being incompetent.\u00a0 There are two main concerns that can provoke the military to intervene or disrupt the civilian government – the peace process with ethnic armed groups and the question of constitutional amendment. If the military sees that the NLD government is incapable of resolving the decades-old ethnic minority problems and feels that there is an imminent threat to the country\u2019s national and territorial integrity, it will find a reason to intervene.\u00a0 Similarly, if the military thinks the NLD government uses its power to try to amend or replace the 2008 constitution with the objective of reducing or eliminating the role of military in politics, it will act.\u00a0 The people of Myanmar and the international community should understand that the democratisation process in Myanmar is a kind consensual transition in which the authoritarian leaders actively participate in the process of change by controlling or limiting the change. This transition entails some degree of political continuity between authoritarianism and the elected government. To avoid confrontation with the military and the country\u2019s ethnic minorities, Suu Kyi must ensure that both these groups are either consulted or included in all major decisions the NLD government takes.\u00a0 It would be a wise move on her part if Suu Kyi can allocate some important portfolios to ethnic minorities. Even if she acts as the architect or above the president, she must act diligently not to provoke the military leadership and not to betray the trust of ethnic minorities.<\/p>\n

\n

Dr. Nehginpao Kipgen is a US-based political scientist.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Read more \/ Original news source: http:\/\/kanglaonline.com\/2015\/11\/has-power-gone-to-suu-kyis-head\/<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nehginpao Kipjen The National League for Democracy (NLD) chairperson Aung San Suu Kyi on November 19 met representatives of more than 50 countries, including Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[2666,330],"class_list":["post-170886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kanglaonline","category-news","tag-articles-opinions","tag-kanglaonline-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170887,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170886\/revisions\/170887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}