Mirror, mirror, on the wall, whose the favorite of them all?
"Myanmar military still powerful despite opposition victory; Suu Kyi to share reins despite her big election win" by Thomas Fuller New York Times November 11, 2015
Pfffffft!
YANGON, Myanmar — They are all vestiges of a police state in Myanmar that has yet to be fully dismantled, outside the control of a new administration.
The New York Times is UNHAPPY about the Myanmar vote!
What a CHANGE IN TONE over the course of ONE DAY!
Myanmar is electrified by the prospect of the long-suffering democracy movement wresting control of Parliament and the executive branch from a military establishment that has ruled in one way or another for the past five decades.
I know how they feel.
Yet under the terms of the constitution drawn up by the generals, a large and powerful part of the bureaucracy will remain under the direct control of the military, including everything from passport issuance to a domestic security apparatus that spies on Myanmar citizens.
Thant Myint-U, a historian who has advised the government, called the victory for the opposition a “crushing win.” But he cautioned that Suu Kyi would be forced into a fragile power-sharing arrangement with the military, which kept her under house arrest for the better part of two decades.
“This was not an election of a government,” Thant Myint-U said. “It was an election for a spot in a shared government with the army.”
Myanmar’s military has always been a highly politicized institution. But its role extends well beyond just politics. The military has business interests in jade and ruby mines, a brewery, bus lines, tobacco, textiles, and banks. Until now the military’s business empire has largely been beyond government scrutiny.
Like AmeriKa's "defense contractors" do not and are not. Lockheed doing computers for Social Security, Accenture fixing the health site, etc, etc, etc.
Years of military rule also created a vast centralized bureaucracy across the country that is often still led by former military officers.
Remember the assortment of ex-generals the AmeriKan media networks trotted out before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the private contracting firms like Blackwater, etc?
Never see a word about them or it anymore.
Like the country’s entire police force, the General Administration Department falls under the Home Ministry, one of three ministries controlled by the military. The other two are defense and border affairs.
Horsey says the military’s control over such a crucial part of the administration will require Suu Kyi to collaborate with the military.
“It will be impossible to administer the country without having the Home Ministry on their side, and that means ultimately the commander in chief of the military,” he said.
But the degree to which Suu Kyi will compromise with her former captors is unclear.
During weeks of campaigning she spoke often about the importance of reconciliation, but she says she plans to circumvent the ban on her becoming president that the generals wrote into the constitution.
In some strong comments on this potential source of friction, Suu Kyi said Tuesday that as head of the party with a parliamentary majority, she would be empowered to pick who will be president, whom she described as subservient to her.
“I make all the decisions because I am the leader of the winning party,” she said in an interview with Channel News-Asia. “And the president will be one whom we will choose just to meet the requirements of the constitution.”
My print copy also says, "The president will be told exactly what he can do."
Why would the Times take that out?
Horsey warned that “there’s plenty of room for things to go wrong.”
The jubilation of Suu Kyi’s political movement has been matched by the shock of the former generals at the breadth of their defeat.
The Irrawaddy, a Myanmar news site, reported Tuesday nearly all candidates who had served in the Cabinet of President Thein Sein were defeated. Other losses from the ruling party included the speaker of the lower house of Parliament and the chairman of the party. Even in a district in the capital, Naypyidaw, heavily populated with soldiers, a former general and defense minister lost to a poet from Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy.
OMG! It looks like a MASSIVE RIG JOB!
Did Diebold machines tally the votes?
--more--"
Also see: Mixed Messages Regarding Myanmar
That's what you get when it's pure propaganda.
