Parliament’s Constitution Amendment Panel Completes Review of Charter

...

Parliament’s Constitution Amendment Panel Completes Review of Charter

The Irrawaddy, 14 Jun 2019

URL: https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/parliaments-constitution-amendment-panel-completes-review-charter.html
YANGON—The Union Parliament’s Charter Amendment Committee on Thursday completed reviewing the entire Constitution for possible amendments. It will submit a report on its findings to Parliament next month.

Committee secretary U Myat Nyana Soe, who is also an Upper House lawmaker for the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), said the report recommends that various provisions of the Constitution be repealed, amended, added to, or retained.

Comprising 45 representatives of political parties and the military, the panel reviewed all 15 chapters of the Constitution, along with five additional schedules relating to tax collection, the state and regional legislatures, self-administered regions and other topics, U Myat Nyana Soe said.

The committee secretary said the details of the committee’s findings would be made public when they are submitted to Parliament, which is in recess. It is prohibited to disclose the details of the committee’s meeting.

The article is one of the most controversial in the Constitution, as it effectively gives the military a veto over any proposed changes.

“Not surprisingly, juridical experts have pronounced that the Myanmar Constitution is about the most rigid in the world today,” Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said.

Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) lawmaker U Sai Thiha Kyaw told The Irrawaddy on Friday that the party proposed changes to almost all clauses of the Constitution at the committee’s meetings.

“But we don’t have high expectations [for the proposed changes],” he said.