Keeping democracy in check

As Myanmar's new democratically elected government finds its footing in the early days of its term, some voices from the capital say the administration hasn’t yet found a way to ensure a healthy separation of powers. The fundamental principle of checks and balances, shared by many democracies the world over, is arguably undermined by the singular power of the new government’s leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and the entrenched political interests of the armed forces.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate and the daughter of Myanmar’s independence hero, led her National League for Democracy party to a resounding victory in last year’s general election. After dominating the previous administration, the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party has been almost entirely flushed out of parliament; the NLD now controls more than 60 percent of the Hluttaw, or Union legislature, with a majority in both houses.

In 1990, the party won a general election with almost identical results, but the then-ruling military junta annulled the outcome and sentenced Suu Kyi, and countless NLD members and supporters, to arrest – Suu Kyi herself was famously detained in her home on the southern edge of Yangon’s Inya Lake. (Courtesy of frontiermyanmar.net)