MYANMAR’S laws are an abject muddle of colonial holdovers, socialist ukases and military decrees—a reflection of its troubled history. Some 140 of them require re-writing, reckons Htin Kyaw Aye of Open Myanmar Initiative, a think-tank monitoring parliament. Among the priorities are the century-old law governing private enterprise, which needs urgent updating; a badly worded defamation clause in the Telecommunications Law that is all too often deployed by anyone holding a grudge; and the passage of a law penalising violence against women, to deal with a glaring omission in the criminal code.
One might expect the first freely elected Hluttaw, or parliament, in more than half a century to be working overtime on this daunting list. Instead it is becalmed. Just days before it was due to reconvene in May, U Tun Tun Hein, chairman of the committee that organises parliamentary work, was at a loss to say what would be done in the next session. “I cannot tell you which laws will be...Continue reading
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