Political
Perspective and Recommendation
Presented by Bo Kaung
In
this part, we would like to discuss something about the key players and groups
of Myanmar political arena, their interest and values and, the dynamic of their
relationships with each other are, and resources they possess. We choose the
following key players and groups for this part discussion-
·
The government
·
The ruling party
·
The main opposition party
·
The defense services, and
·
Armed ethnic groups and other ethnic
based political parties.
Government
The government took the power after the 2010
controversial election victory. The president announced his road map and claimed
good governance and clean government in his inauguration speech. Although most
of the cabinet members are political elites of the previous regime, legitimacy
of the government could be sought by the election. The government can implement
democratic liberalization within very short time not because of the united
strength of the cabinet members but because of the charismatic of the President
U Thein Sein. The international community including the United States, European
Union recognized the reform tasks of the government and most of the economic
and other sanctions have been lifted, and resumed diplomatic relations. Those
support encouraged the reformation process. The important thing the government
could do is carrying out the separation and sharing of power among and between
the executive, legislature and judicial entities, as well as the Union,
Regions, States and local governing bodies.
The challenging issue for the government is inefficient
and corruption rooted bureaucracy. The bureaucratic personnel are very used to
orders and instructions rather than rules and regulations. This becomes a
barrier to the government reform tasks. Moreover, the government has to remedy
the elements that have been wrong in the previous regime, and it becomes a big
burden for the current government, and the development can not be seen as it
assumes to be.
We have some
recommendation for the government. In our opinion, the government should focus
on implementing the projects with obvious progress. For a transition
government, there will be many things to do. The long-term development of the
country is very good, but, we suppose that the motivation of the people are very
important as well. Some long-term projects such as poverty eradication project
will not produce the result very vividly and that sort of project can
discourage the people. Therefore, the government should focus more on
short-term projects with prominent outcomes.
We also would like to suggest the government, especially
the President, to prosecute the government officials who committed corruption,
and let the people know the action of the government transparently because
those actions can stop corruption to some extent.
We appreciate the government political tolerance which
could never be seen in the previous regime. Therefore, we encourage the
government to keep the political tolerance because without which it would be
hard to build the mutual trust with the oppositions, other political
institutions and other stakeholders.
Ruling
Party
The ruling party, Union Development and Solidarity Party,
was born among the military of Myanmar. However, it now becomes a separate
body. The ruling party won a landslide victory in the 2010 elections and they
can occupy the majority seats of the parliament. Most of them are political
elites in the former regime, so they have governing experience and relatively
strong human resources. Now the image of USDP becomes faded for several
reasons. And if they are lucky, they might be a strong opposition of the next government.
The ruling party should focus
on institutionalization which means they should set up a long-term human
capital plan so that they have proper strength for leading the nation in the
future. Moreover, they should remedy the errors and mistakes they have
committed in the former regime and in this regime so that they regain their
good reputation. The most important thing for them is to be ready to stand as a
strong opposition in the next term.
Main
Opposition
The main opposition party of Myanmar, Nation League for
Democracy (NLD), is leaded by the worldwide popular leader Daw Aung Sann Suu
Kyi. For the time being, they are launching a campaign for constitutional
amendment. In the previous by-election campaign, they promised the people to
implement three orientation: rule of law, national reconciliation and
constitutional amendment. However, NLD is supposed to be forgotten the first
two promises and they now target only to amend the constitution. There are
arguments that NLD ignores the circumstance of the situation and claims
theoretical liberal democracy too much. In our opinion, NLD should has
mobilized the other small political parties.
We have some
recommendation for NLD. The party seems rely too much on the Charismatic of the
leader, Daw Aung Sann Suu Kyi. It is, we do not think, a good potential for the
future. Moreover, the party should carefully choose the strategy for its
campaign. They should not waste the power of the people for less result.
Rather, they should focus on the election campaign for the 2015 elections. This
time, they should be ready for the next term of the government. In addition,
they should reveal their road map on political, economic, social, environmental
and foreign relations so that the people can guess the future of the nation.
Defence
Services
The Defence Services (Tatmadaw) is the sole patriotic
defence force in Myanmar. The Commander-in-Chief is the Supreme Commander of
all the armed forces in the Union. The Tatmadaw is mainly responsible for
safeguarding the constitution. Its concern is national stability and security
like other countries’ army. For the time being, the Tatmadaw has a good
relationship with the government, but it has no direct relationship with other
political parties.
We would recommend the
Tatmadaw to keep safeguarding the constitution in the parliaments, and keep
staying away from party politics. The Tatmadaw should focus on the welfare of
the basic level personnel. If they could take the advantage of the strength of
newer generation, it would be a great support for the building of strong and
competence Defence Services. Moreover, they should deal more public relations.
Armed
Ethnic Groups and Other Ethnic Based Political Parties
There are many ethnic based political parties as well as
armed ethnic groups in Myanmar. The similar claim they are doing now is
federalism and rights of self-determination. New political parties are
registering and the peace talk with the armed groups is going on.
We would like to suggest that the armed ethnic group should
agree on ceasefire in order to start political negotiation because the
political dialogue would be hard to succeed without being ceasefire. Ceasefire will be a great support for mutual
trust building among the government and the armed groups. Moreover, they should have a single voice
when they claim their rights.
Conclusion
These are the view of the experts but our view is hard to
say ultimately true. We made this policy recommendation project based on the
lectures of Professor Nigel Gould Davies, some academic articles and the data
available. In our opinion, the person who knows Myanmar current situation very
well is Myanmar people and the key players of Myanmar. We believe that this
small paper can assist the stakeholders of Myanmar in building the Democratic
Nation.
The project was presented to the Professor
and the colleagues of International Center of Excellence (ICoE) at Yangon
University on 11th June 2014.
