Myanmar's Suu Kyi Refuses to Rule out Election Boycott
Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi Thursday refused to rule out a boycott of looming elections as she cast doubt over the likelihood of key changes to a charter that bans her from running for president.
Her country is bracing for elections later this year seen as a vital test of democratic reforms in a nation that was until recently straitjacketed by decades of junta rule.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party wants to amend constitutional clauses that block their leader from the presidency and hand a crucial say over changes to the charter to the military, which holds a quarter of parliamentary seats.
The NLD is expected to hoover up votes in elections slated for November, the first countrywide poll that the party will have contested in 25 years.
But Suu Kyi declined to offer reassurances her party would participate in the election, as the NLD struggles to amend the charter to allow her to take the top job.
"We are not closing off any options. No one can know what will happen, so we have to calculate for every possibility," she told reporters in the capital Naypyidaw.
Nevertheless Suu Kyi, whose party boycotted Myanmar's 2010 election while she was still under military house arrest, said November's polls were the greatest test yet of the country's much vaunted transition towards democracy.
These elections "will decide whether the reform process really is a genuine one", said the opposition leader, who entered parliament for the first time in 2012 after her party swept landmark by-elections.
The Nobel laureate is currently banned from becoming Myanmar's president due to a provision in the junta-era constitution that bars those with a foreign spouse or children from the presidency.
The 69-year-old's two sons are British, as was her late husband and Suu Kyi believes the rule was crafted specifically to block her pathway to the top office.
She has received support, including from U.S. President Barack Obama, for her move to change the constitution.
But observers say she has accepted that it is unlikely she will be able to become president immediately after elections.
Suu Kyi said she was unclear whether her efforts to change key parts of the junta-drafted constitution would bear fruit in the short term.
"I cannot say when they will be amended, I cannot even say whether they will be amended this year," she said.
The NLD has launched a campaign to amend a clause in the charter that requires a majority of more than 75 percent to approve major amendments.
This hands the army, with its 25 percent of seats, a deciding vote.
But analysts say the military is unlikely to relinquish its seats or the political leverage they bring as Myanmar edges towards democracy.
Suu Kyi said Thursday the NLD has proposed a gradual reduction in military lawmakers, but added "if we are going to accept the presence of military representatives in the legislature forever then that's not democracy".
The opposition leader is due to meet president Thein Sein, the powerful army chief Min Aung Hlaing and the parliamentary speaker Shwe Mann on Friday for rare 'six party' talks likely to address the tussle over amending the constitution.
They will be joined by representatives from ethnic political parties, as Thein Sein presses for a binding nationwide ceasefire with the country's myriad rebel groups.
This would open the way for political dialogue that the government has urged should happen before the election.
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma and ruled by the British until 1948, was plunged into isolation by a military regime that seized power in 1962.
It has won praise for widespread economic and political reforms since it emerged from outright military rule in 2011.
But there are growing concerns reforms are backsliding in certain areas, including human rights and press freedom.
Source: Agence France Presse
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