Myanmar parliament opens, spotlight on beleaguered speaker

Parliament resumed in Nay Pyi Taw this morning with Speaker Thura U Shwe Mann rejecting a proposal from a member of his Union Solidarity and Development Party to suspend the session.

Shwe Mann’s political future hangs in the balance after his rivalry with President Thein Sein came to a head on Wednesday, when trucks with security personnel sealed off the headquarters of the party.

On Monday Shwe Mann met the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, as the country’s leaders manoeuvred ahead of the parliamentary showdown in Burma, also known as Myanmar.

“Whatever happens with the USDP is their own internal affair”, a solemn-faced Suu Kyi told reporters as she entered the building.

Rather than cooperating with Shwe Mann and Suu Kyi to reduce the military’s role in politics, the president appears to have aligned himself with the top brass and thus reversed progress made towards democratic reform.

However, U Shwe Mann disagreed with the proposal saying that those MPs, who are busy with their undertakings, can take leave and the session will go on speedily to complete discussions on some remaining bills and then the session can be stopped.

No formal accusation was levied against former general Shwe Mann, who was bundled out of his job but has retained the post of speaker of parliament. “Not only do we need to build a strong and united force to achieve our goals, but we also need to work together with allied political forces to win the 2015 election”.

After months of deliberation and conflicting public statements, it’s finally official: Myanmar’s principal opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), will contest elections set for November. 8.

“Shwe Mann always represents us when we are ignored by the president”.

The president’s allies hosted late-night meetings at the guarded USDP complex and purged Shwe Mann’s faction from the party’s executive committee.

Tension between the two rivals rose after the USDP last week omitted from its list the majority of a group of around 150 officers who retired from military service to run as USDP candidates.

They were Soe Thein, a powerful minister of the president’s office, and Aung Min, who was picked by Thein Sein to lead the government’s efforts to forge a peace agreement with the country’s armed ethnic groups.

“So my best advice for him is “resign from the speaker’s position if you want to prevent further perils for you and your family”.