Myanmar wrapped up a 14-year-old national convention to write guidelines for a new constitution yesterday, completing what military rulers call a first step back to democracy but what critics dismiss as a sham.
The guidelines, yet to be published in full, would ensure the military a prominent role in politics and would bar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from holding elected office.
Observers expressed skepticism about the process.
PHOTO: EPA
"The completion of the first step can be seen as a positive development, but we have to see how honestly the government will proceed with the remaining steps of the road map," an Asian diplomat said on condition of anonymity due to the matter's sensitivity.
Some 1,000 delegates returned to the Nyaung-Hna-Pin convention center, about 45km north of Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, for the closing ceremony of the convention.
The ceremony took place after two weeks of demonstrations against high prices for fuel and consumer goods. Public protests against the government are extremely rare in the tightly controlled country.
The demonstrations have cooled down in the past few days, largely because the government has employed civilian toughs to quickly quash any demonstrations and has jailed many top pro-democracy activists. But security remained high yesterday in Yangon.
Critics have denounced the constitutional process as a stage-managed farce because the military hand-picked most delegates, and because Suu Kyi is under house arrest and could not attend.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party has accused the junta of drafting a constitution unilaterally, saying it doubts the new document would guarantee human rights and democracy and that the junta is likely to continue ruling the country.
NLD member Khun Myint Tun in July called the constitutional convention a "sham" after briefly attending, saying it included only a handful of people who had ever been elected in polls and that junta leaders "are just trying to gain the upper hand so the army can continue ruling the country."
Foreign media were not allowed at the closing ceremony, and few delegates were willing to be quoted by name about the proceedings, fearful that any criticism might offend the military.
The next stage in the seven-step road map is supposed to be drafting the constitution, but it remains unclear who will do so.
The draft would then be voted on in a national referendum, and the process would culminate in general elections, Myanmar's first since 1990, at a still-unspecified date. The military refused to honor the results of that poll after it was won by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS