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Aung
San Suu Kyi barred from running for Myanmar polls
AFP
20
Feb
08
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp...
Myanmar
democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is barred from running for
election under the country's new constitution because she had a
foreign husband, Foreign Minister Nyan Win told his fellow
Southeast Asian ministers yesterday.
Singapore Foreign
Minister George Yeo said Nyan Win was clear on this position
during a dinner cruise off the city-state's waters of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) foreign ministers.
"We did discuss that," Yeo told reporters in
response to a question on whether Aung San Suu Kyi would be
allowed to run in the 2010 vote planned by Myanmar's military
rulers.
"He (Nyan Win) was quite clear that in the
new constitution, a Myanmar citizen who has a foreign husband,
who has children not citizens of Myanmar would be disqualified as
was of the 1974 constitution."
Meanwhile, in Yangon,
Military-ruled Myanmar has completed drafting its proposed
constitution, which the junta plans to bring before voters in a
referendum in May, state media announced late yesterday.
The
junta on February 9 unveiled its surprise plans for the
referendum, which it says will set the stage for democratic
elections in 2010, but critics charge the entire process will
serve only to entrench military rule.
Aung Toe, the chief
justice of Myanmar's Supreme Court, announced in a statement read
over state television that a special commission had completed the
drafting of the charter.
All members signed the draft of
the constitution,†said Aung Toe, who headed
the drafting commission.
He indicated that the commission
had not made many changes to the guidelines produced by the
military's National Convention, a body of 1,000 hand-picked
delegates who spent 14 years in fitful meetings laying out
principles for the charter.
It was impossible to tell
what, if any changes, had been made to the National Convention's
guidelines which imposed stiff limits on the activities of
political parties and effectively barred detained democracy
leader Aung San Suu Kyi from running for president.
Myanmar
has had no constitution since 1988, when the current junta seized
power by suppressing a pro-democracy uprising in a violent
campaign believed to have left 3,000 dead.
The opposition
National League for Democracy warned on Monday that in order to
achieve democracy, Myanmar's rulers must first respect the
results of 1990 elections, won by Nobel peace prize winner Aung
San Suu Kyi.
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