Myanmar’s parliamentary speaker Friday said the government will be instrumental in any amendment to the nation’s military-drafted constitution, which currently bars opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from the presidency.
Opposition members of parliament and democracy activists have raised fears military lawmakers, who have 25% of seats guaranteed under the current constitution, may prove an obstacle to amending the document regardless of whether the government presses for change.
But former general turned speaker Shwe Mann on Friday told reporters that the decision to amend the constitution or not before a hotly anticipated general election in 2015 will need the blessing of reformist President Thein Sein’s government.
The house last month formed a committee to review the document made up of 109 lawmakers including 52 from the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) party, 25 from the military and seven MPs from Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party.
“How far we can complete an amendment of the constitution (before 2015) depends on the struggle between committee members,” Shwe Mann, who is chairman of both lower and upper houses, told reporters in a rare press briefing convened in the capital Naypyidaw.
A major hurdle to Suu Kyi’s stated presidential ambitions is the current constitution, crafted under the former military regime and which blocks anyone whose spouses or children are overseas citizens from leading the country.
Opposition politicians and democracy activists have criticised the constitution, which was written by the former junta more than a decade ago and approved by a nationwide referendum in 2008 soon after the country had been battered by a cyclone.
