Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of the Myanmar Armed Forces, has vowed to respect the outcome of November’s landmark elections and has not ruled out becoming president if asked to take the top post.
“Whoever wins, I will respect the result if they win fairly,” Min Aung Hlaing told the BBC in a rare interview with a Western news outlet released yesterday.
“I believe the elections will be free and fair. That is our true wish. We are committed to helping make that happen, anyway we can,” he said.
About 30 million voters are expected to head to the polls on Nov. 8 for what is predicted to be the nation’s freest election in decades.
Myanmar languished for years under a brutal, isolationist and paranoid military junta, which crushed opposition and ruined the economy while enriching a coterie of senior military officers.
In 2011, army rule gave way to a quasi-reformist civilian government — dominated by former generals — which led to the lifting of most Western sanctions and a promise of elections.
The November elections are to be the first general election in a quarter of a century to be contested by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), which is expected to make huge gains at the ballot box if the vote is free and fair.
It will also give the international community a chance to judge the country’s democratic progress.
However, the army will continue to wield significant political influence even if the opposition sweep the polls, because 25 percent of seats in the country’s parliament will continue to be reserved for the military.
Observers say the army is deeply wedded to its perceived role as the protector of the Myanmar constitution, which was drawn up under a former military regime that suppressed all dissent and kept Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for about 15 years.
The NLD has vowed to change the constitution to reduce the army’s role and overturn a provision that currently bans Aung San Suu Kyi from becoming president, because she has foreign born children.
In his interview, the general said he was open to changing some parts of the constitution, but said others had to remain in place because of ongoing fighting with ethnic rebel groups.
“It is impossible to leave people with all these problems, without real security,” he said of ongoing efforts to end decades of civil war.
Myanmar’s long-running peace process between the government, army and multiple rebel groups has foundered in recent months following the signing of a draft ceasefire deal in March.
Asked whether he had plans to seek the presidency, Min Aung Hlaing insisted he would remain as army chief until his retirement next year. However, he also did not rule out accepting the top post.
“If needed, we have to be prepared to serve the country in any role, this is part of our national politics,” he said. “If people ask me to do this duty, I will decide then.”
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Four days after last scanning in for work, a 60-year-old office worker in Arizona was found dead in a cubicle at her workplace, having never left the building during that time, authorities said. Denise Prudhomme, who worked at a Wells Fargo corporate office, was found dead in a third-floor cubicle on Aug. 20, Tempe police said. She had last scanned into the building on Aug. 16 at 7am, police said. There was no indication she scanned out of the building after that. Prudhomme worked in an underpopulated area of the building. Her cause of death had not been determined, but police said the preliminary
‘DISCONNECTED’: Politics is one factor driving news avoidance, a professor said, adding that people who do not trust the government are more likely to tune it out Hannah Wong cried when the Hong Kong government effectively forced the territory’s Apple Daily and Stand News out of business three years ago. Among the last news firms in the territory willing to criticize the government openly, many saw their end as a sign that the old Hong Kong was gone for good. Today, the 35-year-old makeup artist says she has gone from reading the news every day to reducing her intake drastically to protect herself from despair. Four years into a crackdown on dissent that has swept up democracy-leaning journalists, rights advocates and politicians in the territory, a lot of people
RSS