Speaking as a participant on the BBC Burmese Program’s Current Affairs discussion yesterday, U Ye Tun, MP for the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party (SNDP), or White Tiger Party, said that federalism is not a priorityto the National League for Democracy (NLD),reported the Shan Herald Agency for News, on 28 May.
“What we keep on hearing is its repeated call for the amendment of Article 436 (where any amendment of the 2008 constitution requires a vote of more than 75% of all the representatives of the Union Assembly) and Article 59 (f) (that a Presidential candidate, his/her parent (s), spouse, child(ren) or their spouses not be a citizen of a foreign country),” he says. “I have noticed that it has not put forward the emergence of a federal system as the nation’s first priority issue.”
Sai Nyunt Lwin, General Secretary of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) agreed. “Had the NLD adopted genuine federalism, there wouldn’t be a need to set up (non-Burman) ethnic nationalities’ parties,” he said. “We would have thrown in our lot with the NLD.”
Sai Nyunt Lwin elaborated further that the two parties, despite having friendly relations, have not once engaged in discussions on ethnic nationalities affairs. “The NLD has always avoided making any commitments on the issue,” he said.
Nan Khin Htwe Myint, the NLD participant, however disagreed. “The NLD manifesto includes the call for a genuine federalism,” She argued. “Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself openly supported the (1997) Mae Tha Raw Tha Declaration demanding a genuine federal union together with the Right of Self Determination.”