Friday, 2 June 2017

Democracy has muzzled Myanmar’s parliament

MYANMAR’S laws are an abject muddle of colonial holdovers, socialist ukases and military decrees—a reflection of its troubled history. Some 140 of them require re-writing, reckons Htin Kyaw Aye of Open Myanmar Initiative, a think-tank monitoring parliament. Among the priorities are the century-old law governing private enterprise, which needs urgent updating; a badly worded defamation clause in the Telecommunications Law that is all too often deployed by anyone holding a grudge; and the passage of a law penalising violence against women, to deal with a glaring omission in the criminal code.

One might expect the first freely elected Hluttaw, or parliament, in more than half a century to be working overtime on this daunting list. Instead it is becalmed. Just days before it was due to reconvene in May, U Tun Tun Hein, chairman of the committee that organises parliamentary work, was at a loss to say what would be done in the next session. “I cannot tell you which laws will be...Continue reading

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