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Burma's half-baked presidential election
Irrawaddy - January 24, 2011
Htet Aung – Burma, the only nation in the Southeast Asian region without a constitution for 22 years, will soon adopt a constitutional government which will be headed by a president as the Head of State.
The recent promulgation of the Presidential and Vice-presidential Electoral Law and Bylaw shines a new light on the half-baked presidential election, and reveals the much-detailed process of the two-step presidential election – the first step being to elect and select three vice-presidents, and the second step to elect a president.
Chapter 2 of the bylaw details the procedure and process for the elected members of parliament (MPs) from both the "Pyithu Hluttaw" (People's Assembly or Lower House) and the "Amyotha Hluttaw" (Nationalities' Assembly or Upper House) to nominate one vice-presidential candidate each. That candidate does not need to be an MP, according to both the 2008 Constitution and the Presidential Law and Bylaw.
The two candidates for the two Houses can be nominated individually or by consent of an internal pact. But the MPs must strictly follow a detailed process that begins with receipt of the nomination form, to filling it in, to submitting it to the House Speakers.
According to Articles 6 to 12 of the bylaw, the House Speakers and Deputy Speakers will take no more than one day to scrutinize the qualifications of the candidates and announce the candidate list.
Under the supervision of the House Speaker, the election for the two vice-presidents will be held in the Lower House and Upper House respectively.
If there is only one nominee, the House Speaker must declare that the sole candidate is elected to that position. If there is more than one nominee, the MPs will elect one through a secret ballot. The House Speaker, despite his or her role as supervisor, must also vote. The ballot paper will contain the names of the candidates, and the MPs have to tick one and put a cross beside the other(s).
However, what is most surprising is that within this election law – even though it was drawn up clandestinely and unilaterally by Burma's military generals – there are no details whatsoever about how the third vice-president should be elected from among the military appointees.
Moreover, although the process for selecting the first two vice-presidents is clearly described by the bylaw in Chapter 2, there is nothing written about where the election for the military vice-president will be held.
Therefore, given the command hierarchy of the Burmese military, we can assume that the third vice-president will be selected (not elected) by the military candidates of both parliaments under the supervision of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
The second step is to elect a president. This will occur at a session of the "Pyidaungsu Hluttaw" (the combination of the Lower and Upper Houses known as the "Union Parliament") by a simple majority vote. However, before this can go ahead, a designated body will examine whether the vice-presidents meet the prescribed qualifications in the constitution, as well as in the presidential law and bylaw.
The body is to be composed of seven representatives: the two Speakers and two Deputy Speakers of both Houses, and an MP representing each of the three groups from the Presidential Electoral College.
If the designated body finds that any of the elected vice-presidents do not meet the prescribed qualifications, it can reject the candidate and inform the respective presidential electoral college group to submit a new vice-president, according to Article 29 of the bylaw.
Burma's new presidential system therefore allows for a person who was not elected in the general election to become a vice-president. If that persons were to be elected by the new bicameral parliament in the presidential run-off, Burma would find itself ruled by a president who has risen to power without ever facing a popular vote.
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