Yangon (AsiaNews) - In the 2015 election campaign, Aung San Suu Kyi "will be at the helm" of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party and "play a key role". However, any possibility of her becoming the future President of Myanmar, looks "very difficult, if not impossible".
This is what Aye Chan Naing, director of the dissident website Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), tells AsiaNews regarding the rumors - later denied - that the NLD would have supported the current president of the Parliament (and former general) Shwe Mann in presidential elections next year. The position of the main opposition movement remains unclear given that it insists it will support Suu Kyi, who in reality is excluded from the race for the most important office in the state.
Controversy has been sparked by alleged statements by NLD
leader Hantha Myint in an interview with Reuters that the party is "considering
the possibility" of supporting Shwe Mann for president in 2015. However,
the politician has strongly denied this, saying "no reference" was
made to the current President of the Parliament in the conversation with the
reporter.
Within hours of being published on September 23 the article had fueled deep
resentment in Burmese civil society, over what is seen as giving in to the ruling
party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), whose members belong
to or are close to the former military junta. This is why the NLD leaders issued
a strict crackdown in an official statement to deny the news. The next day Suu
Kyi intervened and spoke of "probable misreading" of the words of Hantha
Myint, interviewed along with NLD spokesman Nyan Win.
At the center of the controversy the infamous article 59 of the Constitution of Myanmar, a norm tailored to preventing tAung San Suu Kyi from running for head of state. It prevents a Burmese citizen from becoming president if he or she has children abroad (hers are British, as was her deceased husband) .
Interviewed by AsiaNews, Aye Chan Naing said that among candidates for the presidency, "there are some former military officers," but " other options remain open " including "leader of the second generation" student movement, "" Generation 88 ". A leading dissident he is currently the head of a radiostation based in Oslo (Norway), founded by Burmese diaspora around the democratic opposition, which has repeatedly witnessed the violence of the military against civilians and Buddhist monks.'
The NLD, he adds, is still "the most popular party in
Myanmar", but its leading exponent "cannot be nominated for president
under the current Constitution" and is therefore forced to find another
name. Either way he does not consider support for the Shwe Mann candidacy likely,
although nothing is certain.
Finally, on the subject of last minute changes in the Charter which could allow
Aung San Suu Kyi to participate in the presidential vote, the Dvb director says
that "everything is possible, but the chances are very slim". "This
Constitution is written in such a way - comments Aye Chan Naing - that it is
almost impossible to change it without affecting leaders of the government or the
military."