Political leaders view efforts to advance constitution amendments in parliament as ineffective

March 6, 2020

HURFOM: During the 15th regular meeting of the second term of the Union Parliament, in February of this year, lawmakers have been discussing the articles and sub articles of draft amendments to the 2008 Constitution.

Some political leaders are not optimistic about the task. The Chair of the New Mon State Party (NMSP), Nai Hong Sar commented on February 27 that trying to amend the Constitution in the parliament was ineffective.

“We can’t rely on parliament regarding constitutional amendments. It’s difficult and might not work, I think,” said Nai Hong Sar.

The most effective way to amend the Constitution is to follow the union accords developed by multi stakeholders in the 21st Century Panglong Conference, commented Nai Hong Sar.

“The constitution was drawn by the military and they don’t want to amend it. So we can’t rely on the Parliament to amend the Constitution. Even if the parliament is able to amend the Constitution, only unimportant articles are amended,” continued Nai Hong Sar.

Secretary #1 of the Mon Unity Party, Nai Laye Tama noted opposing opinions and arguments regarding constitutional amendments between the National League for Democracy (NLD) government and the military persist, signalling agreement is unlikely.

“As far as I know, among 114 articles of the draft of constitutional amendments, there was no article related to ethnic rights, self determination and federal system. So this attempt at constitution amendments has no hope for (non-Burmese) ethnic people,” said Nai Laye Tama.

The NLD’s attempts to amend the constitution at the time near to the election, has also received criticism that the party may use the impasse as propaganda during the 2020 election.

Written by Modinator · Filed Under News