• Alert! Election Ahead!

    Posted in Ideas & Impacts, Legislative Research on Aug 28, 2020

    Many people have fought long and hard for the right to vote in Myanmar. The UEC and all state institutions should be rejoicing in the opportunity people now have to freely discuss and debate political ideas ahead of the November poll. But instead, by frightening people with information about potential fines or imprisonment, they are sending out the opposite message.

  • Backgrounder & Summary: Central Provident Fund Bill

    Posted in Legislative Research on Aug 14, 2020

    The CPF will affect all new personnel and those with fewer than 10 years of service, counted at the date the law comes into force. Civil service personnel with more than 10 years of service will be able to continue receiving benefits from the old system. The changes under the bill are planned begin in the coming fiscal year, and in the Budget Bill for the 2020-2021 FY, 100 billion kyat has been put for the implementation of the CPF.

  • Voting, Not Voting and the Right to Criticise

    Posted in Legislative Research on Aug 11, 2020

    Democracy might begin, but certainly does not end, with voting. As well as being able to periodically elect the government, citizens also have the right to ongoing participation in the policymaking process, and the day-to-day activities of government.

  • Voting, Not Voting and Democracy

    Posted in Legislative Research on Aug 06, 2020

    In a democracy, it is guaranteed in law that those above a certain age have the right to vote in the election, and in most democracies, including Myanmar, the right not to vote – to abstain – is also protected. Interestingly, some countries like India have inserted an alternative option of ‘none of the above’ on the ballot for those who dislike all parties or candidates. Known as the “right to reject”, it is enshrined in the election laws of those countries.

  • Backgrounder & Summary: Amendment Bill on The Defence Services Act, 1959

    Posted in Legislative Research on Jul 30, 2020

    The Act has been amended five times previously– in 1960, 1961, 1962, 1989 and 2010. The current amendment bill was drafted with reference to the Singapore Armed Forces Act, 1972 and The Indian Army Act, 1950. The reason given for proposing the amendment was to prevent impunity from punishment of soldiers who have committed an offence, and to maintain army discipline.

  • Amending the Constitution to Protect Human Rights

    Posted in Legislative Research on Jul 29, 2020

    There are many remaining requirements to be embedded in the governance of the country to respect and protect human rights – not least the need to respect gender equality and women’s rights, to ensure no one is discriminated against because of their ethnicity, and the need to protect workers’ rights. If changes cannot be made to protect everyone’s fundamental human rights, due to the lack of political will, and the time and cost of changing the constitution, the current Constitution is unlikely to ever be able to fulfil its functions.

  • ကိုဗစ်-၁၉ စီးပွားရေးသက်ရောက်မှု ကုစားရေး ချေးငွေများ

    Posted in Budget Transparency on Jul 07, 2020

    ကိုဗစ် - ၁၉ကြောင့် ဖြစ်ပေါ်လာနိုင်သည့် စီးပွားရေးသက်ရောက်မှုအပေါ် ကုစားရေးလုပ်ငန်းကော်မတီမှာ လုပ်ငန်းတာဝန် (၆) ရပ်ရှိပြီး “ပြည်တွင်း အသေးစား၊ အငယ်စားနှင့် အလတ်စားစီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းများ အပေါ် COVID-19 ဖြစ်စဉ် သက်ရောက်မှုကြီးမားလာပါက အခွန်ကင်းလွတ်ခွင့်နှင့် သက်သာခွင့်များပေးရေး နိုင်ငံတော်သမ္မတရုံးသို့ သုံးသပ်တင်ပြရန်” နဲ့ “လိုအပ်ပါက ပြည်တွင်းစီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းများအတွက် သက်သာသည့် အတိုးနှုန်းဖြင့် ချေးငွေများ ထုတ်ပေးနိုင်ရေး နိုင်ငံတော်သမ္မတရုံးသို့ သုံးသပ်တင်ပြရန်” ဆိုတဲ့ အချက်တွေ ပါဝင်ပါတယ်။ ဒီလုပ်ငန်းတာဝန်အတိုင်း စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းတွေကို အစိုးရက သက်သာတဲ့ အတိုးနှုန်းနဲ့ ချေးငွေချထားမှုတွေ စတင်ခဲ့တာဟာ အခုဆိုရင် သတ္တမအကြိမ်မြောက် ရှိနေပြီဖြစ်ပြီး လုပ်ငန်းပေါင်း ၃၄၀၁ ခုကို ချေးငွေချထားပေးပြီး ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

  • Backgrounder & Summary: Amendment Bill on the Code of Civil Procedure

    Posted in Legislative Research on Jun 11, 2020

    The current amendment bill may be linked with the court-led mediation programme, as there is a new provision being proposed for adding into the Chapter “Arbitration” under the “Part V. Special Proceedings” of the Code of Civil Procedure. The bill includes provisions explaining mediation, which cases can be resolved by the court in this way, and how, and how to verify agreements reached during the process.

  • Backgrounder & Summary: Medical Device Bill

    Posted in Legislative Research on May 25, 2020

    The bill includes provisions relating to the classification of medical devices, including conformity assessment, registration, application for licenses and recommendations, as well as labeling, advertisement, market monitoring and reporting of adverse effects, and clinical investigation.

  • Backgrounder & Summary: Direct Selling Bill

    Posted in Legislative Research on May 22, 2020

    Sales representatives have duty and rights – the disclosure of addresses while advertising goods/services, the prior explanation of side effects and additional costs to the consumer before the sales, the recording of the sales, and complaints about employers to the Department.