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. . . The constitution bans some elected officials including the presidents, the union ministers, cabinet members, and members of some union level organizations not to participate the activities of the political parties especially the parties they came from. However, there is no law or code of conduct which clearly interprets the actions of the official deemed to be participating in the party’s activities. The lack of such law or code of conduct encourages the elected officials to cross the line banned by the constitution.
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. . . There have been many criticisms of such actions committed by the ruling party NLD. The first one is a televised program conducted by the CEC members of the NLD broadcasted on a state-owned media just one day before the byelection 2017. The second one is the attendance of the two union ministers to the second party congress of the NLD. The opposition party group led by the USDP put their objection on the matters as violating the constitution. In spite of their official complaint, the election commission responsible for such actions of the political parties did not make any action and just released an announcement that the actions do not violate the constitution.
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. . . For the time being, enacting such a law or drafting a set of code of conducts initiated by the election commission or elected MPs in the parliament could not be expected. Probably but almost impossible, the military MPs in both houses could fill this blank as they are also eligible for submitting a bill in the parliament.
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. . . The State Counsellor who is serving as a union minister for two ministries also paid two visits to the Kachin and Chin States during the campaign period of the 2018 byelection. The election will be held on 3rd November to fill 13 parliamentary seats and two of them will come from the two states Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has recently visited.
28 October 2018
