Myanmar democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi is unlikely to take a formal position in the incoming government of her National League for Democracy (NLD) and is to control the administration through her position as party leader, a senior official said.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate led the NLD to a landslide win in a historic election in November last year, but a constitution drafted by the former junta bars her from the presidency because her two sons are British citizens, as was her late husband.
“Taking positions is not that important any more... In the United States there are many famous lawmakers in the parliament who are very influential, but they do not take any position in the Cabinet,” NLD spokesman Zaw Myint Maung said on Sunday.
Photo: EPA
“It is the same here. She will lead the party, so she will lead the government formed by that party,” Zaw Myint Maung said in the most detailed remarks from the NLD so far on how Aung San Suu Kyi plans to wield power.
Other top-level NLD politicians, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s confidant, Win Htein, have likened her role to that of Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. As leader of India’s Congress party, she dominated the government of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh before it fell from power in 2014, but held no ministerial position.
NLD leaders have derided the constitution as “ridiculous,” and Aung San Suu Kyi has pledged to run the nation through a proxy president.
The NLD-dominated parliament last week elected Htin Kyaw — a close friend and confidant of Aung San Suu Kyi — for that role, making him the first head of state since the 1960s who is not a serving or recently retired senior military officer.
In the run-up to the November poll last year, Aung San Suu Kyi had made clear she intended to lead the government regardless of whether she was president, but said the Sonia Gandhi comparison was “not quite” accurate. She has not elaborated since.
Htin Kyaw yesterday made his first public speech since being elected, pledging job security for public servants even as the parliament cut the number of ministries by about one-third to 21.
He said the reforms would save Myanmar more than US$4.1 million and those savings would be spent on healthcare, education and rural development.
“There is no reason for causing unemployment if the government employees take jobs in accordance with existing laws, rules and regulations,” he said, without elaborating.
Most military members of parliament, who hold one-quarter of the seats in the parliament, also voted in favor of the changes, results showed.
“I think the military also understands that they [some ministries] are not necessary. Their collaboration is an improvement in the parliament,” lower house NLD lawmaker Aung Hlaing Win said.
Despite public messages of support and collaboration, behind-the-scenes tensions between the army and the NLD have simmered in the run-up to the handover of power.
The military questioned the NLD’s presidential and vice presidential picks and openly confronted its members of parliament over a controversial copper mine project last month.
How the army, which sees itself as the guardian of the constitution, responds to Aung San Suu Kyi’s bid to lead from “above the president” remains to be seen. The document states the president “takes precedence over all other persons” in Myanmar.
The NLD government’s term starts on April 1. A parliamentary agenda showed the speaker would unveil the makeup of the Cabinet today.
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