New ‘state counsellor’ role affords Aung San Suu Kyi overarching power but may test relationship with military
The military – which still controls 25 per cent of the country’s parliament seats – had said that the new post violates the country’s constitution.
Myanmar’s parliament on Tuesday created a powerful new role for governing party leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s revered Nobel laureate.
Suu Kyi, 70, will now become Myanmar’s “state counsellor”, a position that gives her wide and largely undefined powers that may violate the country’s military-drafted constitution, critics have said. The parliament’s military bloc strenuously objected to the move.
The new role will give Suu Kyi the ability to work with both parliamentary and ministerial leaders and will provide legal authority for her to direct all government activity and policy that is not controlled by the military, analysts say. She will also serve as the country’s foreign minister and minister to the president’s office.
Suu Kyi has made it clear since her party swept to victory in November that she would be leading her country in a post that’s “above” the president. Since then, she has tightly controlled the transition process, taking advice from just a handful of her closest advisers. One of her long-time allies, Htin Kyaw, was inaugurated as president last week.
“Aung San Suu Kyi obviously intends to institutionalise her role ‘above the president’,” said Renaud Egreteau, a fellow in the Asia Programme at the Wilson Centre in Washington, who is researching the role of Myanmar’s parliament as the country has moved from a military junta toward democracy.
Aung San Suu Kyi obviously intends to institutionalise her role ‘above the president’
Yet the country’s 2008 constitution – drafted by the military – says that the president is both head of the union and head of the executive branch, he notes.
