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Myanmar's ruling junta Saturday detailed reasons for bluntly refusing to reform its election plans, and accused a UN envoy of bias in favour of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Myanmar's official New Light of Myanmar newspaper, a government mouthpiece, printed more than three pages of blistering remarks by the information minister to visiting UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari.
Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan met Gambari for more than two hours on Friday, as part of the envoy's effort to encourage the regime to include the pro-democracy opposition in its plans to hold a constitutional referendum in May and multiparty elections in 2010.
Gambari arrived on Thursday, his third visit to the country since the regime launched a deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protests last September, killing at least 31 people, according to the United Nations.
If held, the elections would be the first since Aung San Suu Kyi led her National League for Democracy (NLD) party to a landslide victory in 1990 polls, a result never recognised by the regime.
The new constitution would bar Aung San Suu Kyi from future elections because of her marriage to a foreigner, late Briton Michael Aris.
A new law governing the referendum also sharply limits her party's ability to campaign, criminalising public speeches and leaflets about the vote.
Western countries have decried Myanmar's vote plans for failing to include the NLD, but Kyaw Hsan flatly refused to make any changes to the proposed charter.
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The UN envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, said Thursday that he would raise the issue of Aung San Suu Kyi being banned from 2010 elections when he visits the military regime as early as next month.
The ruling junta said this week that democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi would be barred from running in polls slated under a proposed constitution, which has been drafted for approval in a May referendum.
Asked about the ban and whether the election would be pointless without Aung San Suu Kyi's participation, Gambari told reporters: "These are some of the issues that I intend to discuss with the authorities.
"I believe that they are in the process of inviting me to return to Myanmar, hopefully the first week of March," he said.
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Indonesia wants to see democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi included in the political process in military-ruled Myanmar, Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda said Wednesday.
Myanmar's Foreign Minister Nyan Win last week confirmed to his Southeast Asian counterparts that the military's new constitution would bar widow Aung San Suu Kyi from running in elections that have been slated for 2010 as she had been married to a foreigner.
Wirayuda said that Indonesia, the largest member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations -- to which Myanmar also belongs -- should along with ASEAN still engage with the regime to push for an inclusive political process.
Indonesia welcomed the announcement of the May constitutional referendum and 2010 elections, "but Indonesia is still advocating an engagement by ASEAN with Myanmar," Wirayuda told a press briefing.
He said Indonesia supported the mission of UN envoy to Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari, who is UN chief Ban Ki-moon's pointman on promoting national reconciliation in Myanmar.
"But Myanmar, being a member of the ASEAN family, we see the importance of ASEAN or Indonesia, at least, to engage Myanmar so we can ensure that the process that they are now undertaking... could result in the solution that is also acceptable to the international community," Wirayuda said.
"That's why our concern is how to make the process in Myanmar more credible, meaning to make the process more inclusive by allowing the participation of groups including Madam Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD (her National League for Democracy party), as well as minority groups... in the coming process," he added.
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Anyone who distributes leaflets or makes speeches against Myanmar's constitutional referendum can be imprisoned for three years under new rules governing the May vote published by state media Wednesday.
On Feb. 9 the government announced its plan for the referendum — the first time the junta has set any date for a step in its earlier-announced "roadmap to democracy." General elections are supposed to follow in 2010.
Critics say the junta's plans are undemocratic because they did not include input from opponents of military rule, especially the opposition National League for Democracy party led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The NLD won the last general elections in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.
The junta's opponents also complain that guidelines earlier adopted for writing the new constitution are designed to perpetuate military control and prevent Suu Kyi from running for office.
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The people who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize have earned the right to act, at certain times, as representatives of the world's conscience. This was never more true than in the statement on Myanmar issued last week by Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and signed by eight of his fellow Nobel laureates.
After the ruling military junta shot and beat saffron-robed Buddhist monks and other citizens who were peacefully demonstrating for democracy last fall, most governments only dithered. The United Nations sent a special envoy to Myanmar to beg the despotic generals for some gesture of reconciliation with a population that despises them.
Predictably, the regime of General Than Shwe went on rounding up monks and other pro-democracy activists. In a show of disdain for their own people and the rest of the world, the generals announced last week that they will hold a vote in May on a new constitution - a phony referendum on a document that their stooges have spent 14 years drafting. And they rubbed salt in their victims' wounds by decreeing that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi will not be allowed to participate in elections envisioned for 2010.
Suu Kyi has been under some form of arrest for 12 of the past 18 years, since her National League for Democracy won 82 percent of parliamentary seats in a 1990 election the junta has refused to honor. In their appeal, the Nobel laureates declared, "We stand firmly in support of our fellow Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and have repeatedly called for her release, as well as the release of Buddhist monks and all political prisoners in Burma."
Because Suu Kyi, her National League for Democracy, and Burma's oppressed ethnic minorities have been excluded from the regime's "roadmap" to a new constitution and elections, the laureates said, the junta's version of reconciliation is "flawed."
Bishop Tutu, in his own accompanying statement, was more pointed. "The election promised by the military regime is a complete sham," he declared. Just as an arms embargo was imposed on apartheid South Africa after police massacred black demonstrators in the 1960s and '70s, Tutu said, the UN and the nations of the world should "immediately impose arms embargoes and targeted banking sanctions on Burma following the Saffron Massacre."
Governments habitually act - or refuse to act - for reasons of state. By calling on those states to impose penalties on the Burmese junta, Tutu and his fellow laureates are defending the interests of humanity.
International Herald Tribune
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The United States on Wednesday criticized a decision by the ruling military junta in Myanmar to ban pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from running in elections in 2010.
"That is hardly the definition of free and fair elections," said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council. "The junta needs to start from scratch with a real constitution that actually passes the laugh test."
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A group of Nobel laureates has called for an arms embargo against Myanmar, dismissing elections planned for 2010 as flawed if pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is barred from standing.
A group of seven laureates, including Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and South Africa's anti-apartheid cleric Desmond Tutu, said the junta should face sanctions for its crackdown on Buddhist monks last September rather than plaudits for its recent announcement of an election timetable.
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Myanmar's military government announced the completion Tuesday of the writing of the country's new draft constitution. State radio and television said the 54-member Constitution Drafting Commission finished the draft after working on it for more than two months, but the text of the document was not made public.
The junta announced earlier this month that the draft will be submitted to a national referendum in May.
Government critics have called the constitutional process undemocratic because it has been closely directed by the military with no input from independent parties.
Guidelines used to draft the new charter also bar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from national office because she was married to a foreigner — her late British husband, Michael Aris — and enjoyed the privileges of a foreign national.
The country's last election was held in 1990, but the military refused to hand over power to the winner — the National League for Democracy party of detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been in prison or under house arrest for more than 12 of the past 18 years. The country has been in a political deadlock since the military refused to recognize the election results, saying after the polls that the country first needed a new constitution. It harassed and arrested members of the pro-democracy movement, particularly from Suu Kyi's party.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been under international pressure to make democratic reforms, especially since it violently quashed peaceful protests last September. The U.N. estimates at least 31 people were killed and thousands more were detained in the crackdown.
Critics denounced the constitutional convention process as a stage-managed farce because the military hand-picked most delegates and because Suu Kyi is under house arrest and could not attend.
full article: International Herald Tribune
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