Burmese opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi has voiced confidence that the country’s powerful military will support changes to the constitution that would allow her to become president.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner, who spent nearly two decades under house arrest until recent reforms, said she was hopeful that parliament will approve constitutional revisions even though the army controls a vital number of seats.
“I am not unduly worried by it. I think that the members of our military, like the rest of our nation, would like to see Burma a happier, stronger, more harmonious country,” she said, referring to Myanmar by its former name.
Photo: EPA
“Because of that, I do not rule out the possibility of amendment through negotiated compromise,” she said on Friday at the East-West Center on a visit to the US Pacific state of Hawaii.
Burmese President Thein Sein, a former general, surprised even critics by launching a slew of reforms after taking office in 2011 — including freeing political prisoners, easing censorship and permitting Aung San Suu Kyi to enter parliament.
Thein Sein has said he would accept Aung San Suu Kyi as president if her National League for Democracy wins the next elections in 2015, but some activists question whether hardliners would be willing to let the army relinquish power.
Under the 2008 constitution, the presidency cannot be held by anyone whose spouse or children hold foreign nationality. Aung San Suu Kyi was married to the late British academic Michael Aris, with whom she has two children.
“I do not think it is right for any constitution to be written with anybody in mind — whether it is written to keep anybody in office for life, or whether it is written with the intention of keeping anybody out of office for life,” said Aung San Suu Kyi, who has previously voiced willingness to be president.
“It’s just not acceptable, it’s not democratic, and it’s not what a constitution is all about,” she said.
Aung San Suu Kyi enjoys respect among some officers, as her father Aung San created the army and led the struggle against British colonial rule.
She also hoped to amend the constitution to recognize the “aspirations” of minorities. Fighting has persisted between the Burmese-dominated army and ethnic rebels despite calls by Thein Sein for reconciliation.
“Unless we can meet those aspirations, we can never hope to build a true and lasting union based on peace and harmony,” she said.
Aung San Suu Kyi was visiting Hawaii as part of an initiative by the US state to share its values.
In a scene that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, Aung San Suu Kyi spoke fondly about dining with friends on Honolulu’s sun-kissed Waikiki beach.
She has toured Europe and North America since her release from house arrest. US President Barack Obama paid a landmark visit to Myanmar in November last year, hoping to encouraging reforms.
Myanmar’s foreign ministry on Saturday criticized the US for raising concerns over unabated fighting in northern Kachin state, where tens of thousands of people have been displaced since June 2011.
The statement also said Myanmar “strongly objects” to the use of the name Burma by the US, urging the two nations to avoid actions that could go against “mutual respect.”
However, Aung San Suu Kyi vigorously defended calling her country Burma in English, saying that the name Myanmar was imposed by the military leadership.
“The assertion that we have to get rid of the name because it was a colonial legacy I find narrow, and I think it reflects lack of self-confidence rather than anything else,” she said.
Aung San Suu Kyi said that Japan, China, India, Indonesia and the Philippines also used names that were legacies from foreigners.
“It’s not the name that makes the country; it’s the country that makes the name,” she said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.