Typo or trick? Myanmar’s missing words reveal all

Gulf Times
YANGON: In Myanmar, the devil really is in the detail.
Close scrutineers of the former Burma’s new constitution, due to be put to a referendum next month, are wondering whether the omission of four key words is just a typographical error or a dastardly trick by the military junta to keep power forever.
In a widely published outline of the charter, Myanmar’s voters were led to believe that changing the constitution would need approval from 75% of parliament and then a simple majority - “more than half of all eligible voters” - in a referendum.
However, when the full document leaked out a week ago, many were surprised to see constitutional tweaks would need approval from “all eligible voters”, a proviso that in reality makes any amendments impossible in a country of 53mn people.
Whether the omission of “more than half of” is deliberate or accidental is unclear, especially since Information Minister Kyaw Hsan, in a rare news conference last month, said the constitution would be open to gradual improvement after the May referendum.
Some junta opponents who were prepared to swallow the army-drafted charter, if only because it could be changed later, were alarmed by the omission and have decided to vote “no” in the plebiscite, whose precise date is yet to be announced.
“We were surprised to see the discrepancy,” said one retired lawyer, who did not wish to be named.
“All my friends who had said having a constitution would be better than having no constitution have changed their minds.”
The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) of detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is convinced the junta, the latest face of 46 years of military rule, is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the people.
“It must have been changed purposely,” party spokesman Nyan Win, a lawyer by training, said.The constitution, which has not been made public officially, is a key step in the junta’s seven-point “roadmap to democracy” meant to culminate in multi-party elections in 2010.
It has been widely derided by the opposition and Western governments as a blueprint for the generals cementing their grip on the power they first seized in a 1962 coup.
The charter grants the military an automatic 25% of seats in parliament, and gives the commander-in-chief the right to suspend the constitution at will.
The referendum discrepancy is not the only difference between the full constitution and the “detailed basic principles” that have appeared in the state-run media.
Another sentence that appears to have been slipped in at the last minute is an amnesty clause protecting any members of the State Peace and Development Council, as the junta calls itself, from future legal action. – Reuters