Regional parliaments rising to the challenge

Early signs from the Yangon Hluttaw suggest that the state and region parliaments will do a better job of holding local governments to account than their predecessors.

By HEIN KO SOE & THOMAS KEAN | FRONTIER

MYANMAR’S state and regional legislatures have been slow to find their feet during the country’s transition. While lawmakers in Nay Pyi Taw cut ministry budgets and reshaped draft legislation, the 14 sub-national parliaments have been largely bit players in the reform process. Rarely have they challenged the state and region governments on which they are supposed to exercise oversight.

The Yangon Region Hluttaw is a case in point. Over the past five years it largely acted as a rubber stamp for the regional government, signing off on budget requests and bills, and ignoring widespread complaints about service delivery and unpopular projects. Scrutiny was minimal, and brought to bear by only a handful of mostly opposition MPs.

But the sub-national legislatures are important institutions for political decentralisation, which is a key issue in negotiations toward a peace settlement and broader reconciliation with ethnic minorities. They also play a significant role in service delivery in urban areas, as they approve municipal budgets and enact laws for local elections.

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So is the role of these new lawmaking bodies likely to develop over the coming five years? And what are the early indications from the Yangon parliament?

Before considering these questions, it’s important to understand some of the reasons behind why the Yangon hluttaw and other sub-national legislatures were largely ineffective over the past five years.

Constitutional barriers

There are important differences in how the national and sub-national governments and legislatures operate. The constitution requires all members of the Union government to resign as MPs. In contrast, the chief minister must be an MP (either elected or appointed) in their local state or region hluttaw, and does not have to resign after taking office.

Members of cabinet do not have to be MPs, but between 2011 and 2016 this tended to be the case. This created something more akin to a Westminster system, with members of the state or region government cabinet sitting in parliament and voting on bills and proposals related to their administration.

The state and region governments are also formed differently than the Union government. While the president is chosen by lawmakers through a vote, the chief ministers are hand-picked by the president, and the state and region hluttaws have little scope to reject the president’s nominee. The chief minister and president then select the cabinet (with the exception of the minister for security and border affairs, who is nominated by the commander-in-chief).

Parliamentarians in the Yangon Hluttaw start a session in February. (Teza Hlaing / Frontier)

Parliamentarians in the Yangon Hluttaw start a session in February. (Teza Hlaing / Frontier)

This process has served to limit decentralisation because the chief ministers are accountable to (and dependent on) the government in Nay Pyi Taw rather than their local hluttaw. In 2015, the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw considered a constitutional amendment that would have seen the state and region hluttaws choose their chief ministers, but this proposal was vetoed by military MPs.

Breaking down the house

Another factor in the acquiescence of the local hluttaws to state and region government demands was their composition and leadership. The Union Solidarity and Development Party won an overwhelming majority in the 2010 election, claiming 494 of 661, or about 75 percent, of elected seats in the 14 state and region legislatures. The rest mostly went to ethnic minority parties, while the military held an additional 222 seats.

In April 2012, by-elections were held in 45 constituencies around the country, mostly seats vacated by MPs elevated to the Union government. The NLD won 43 of these. However, only two were for sub-national parliaments: one each for the Bago and Ayeyarwady region hluttaws. As a result, the local parliaments missed out on an injection of non-USDP lawmakers.

Nevertheless, the USDP had a large majority in the Union and mostsub-national parliaments. So why were lawmakers in Nay Pyi Taw so much more outspoken? There were a number of important factors.

The chief ministers, who were often former regional military commanders, tended to dominate decision-making. In some cases, they were known to make decisions on areas of policy without even consulting therelevant cabinet minister.

There was also the leadership of the speakers, who are quite powerful in Myanmar’s political system. In Nay Pyi Taw, lower house speaker Thura U Shwe Mann and upper house speaker U Khin Aung Myint encouraged open debate and close scrutiny of the government. In the regional parliaments, the speakers were less assertive, and deferred to the chief minister and regional government. Most USDP lawmakers hewed close to the government line.

U Aye Thein, a former Yangon Region Hluttaw MP from the NUP, said lawmakers weren’t even able to ask questions during the first session in 2011. Later, they were able to raise issues related to their constituency or the region, and during its five-year term the previous assembly saw almost 2500 questions and 177 proposals submitted.

However, few MPs seriously pressed the regional government, Aye Thein said.

A notable exception was in Ayeyarwady Region, where the speaker, U Hsan Sint, actively challenged the regional government on a range of issues. However, he soon found the limits of USDP tolerance for such outspokenness. When the dispute came to a head, U Thein Sein resolved the problem by promoting Hsan Sint to minister for religious affairs. But he soon fought with Thein Sein, too, and was then dismissed from cabinet, charged with misusing public property and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

In smaller states and regions, there were often few MPs in a position to speak out against the regional government agenda. Because cabinets contained at least 10 members and ministers were nearly always selected from among MPs, in states like Chin and Kayin this left just a handful of MPs outside cabinet. As a result, their respective hluttaws tended to meet “extremely infrequently”, the Asia Foundation noted in its September 2013 report, State and Region Governments in Myanmar. The authors said that having most MPs in cabinet served to “significantly reduce the impact and effectiveness of the hluttaw as a representative body”.

Low public expectations resulted in reduced media scrutiny on the activities of the state and region hluttaws, and little public pressure to take action over a particular issue. The Asia Foundation report noted that members of the public with complaints or requests were much more likely to direct them to the regional government or Union parliament representatives.

“The potential for state and region representatives to be a conduit for local priorities, a check on central and local executive power, and a channel for grievances, is still very underdeveloped,” it noted.

Yangon Hluttaw: more of the same or breaking the mould?

In the last Yangon hluttaw, the USDP held 75 seats. Other parties held 16 seats, with one independent. The “opposition” cohort has shrunk significantly after the 2015 election, in which the NLD claimed 88 of 92 elected seats. The USDP won just three, while the Arakan National Party picked up the last. As before, the military holds another 31 seats.

The composition is not the only change. There are more committees this time around – so far 10 have been formed, double the number in the previous hluttaw – suggesting that MPs are going to be taking a more active role in regional affairs, governance and the local economy.

Sessions are also more frequent and running longer. Before it wasn’t unusual for a session to conclude after just a few days. The new hluttaw’s first session began on February 8 and ran for two months, during which it discussed three amendment bills, including the 2016-17 budget and national planning laws passed by the outgoing hluttaw.

During the second session from May 2 to June 14, some more priorities emerged. MPs focused on illegal buildings, flooding in downtown and other Yangon townships, the illicit drug trade and rule of law.

While the NLD dominates both the regional government and hluttaw, Daw Sandar Min, who leads the hluttaw’s Planning, Finance and Economic Committee, said MPs were committed to ensuring proper scrutiny of the regional government. Major projects would be discussed in the hluttaw before decisions on them are made, she added.

“If any project is not beneficial for the public, we’ll object and point it out. This is our job, to provide a check and balance,” she said.

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Yangon Region NLD lawmaker Daw Sandar Min speaks to Frontier. (Teza Hlaing / Frontier)

Frontier contacted chief minister U Phyo Min Thein for comment, but his assistant said he had temporarily stopped speaking to the media.

For now, it is the decisions of the previous regional government and hluttaw that are occupying most of the attention of MPs. Sandar Min’s committee, for example, was instrumental in the decision by the Union Parliament in May to cancel the US$70 million Parkway Yangon Hospital, which was approved by former chief minister U Myint Swe in January shortly before he left office.

During the current recess, the bill committee is also examining more than 20 laws passed by the previous hluttaw and considering potential amendments, committee member U Nay Naing Oo told Frontier.

But new challenges are emerging that the previous hluttaw did not likely have to deal with. Sandar Min said civil servants, particularly in the military controlled General Administration Department, were reluctant to cooperate and were obstructing hluttaw representatives’ work.

“They still have a red-tape system that creates problems when MPs head out into their constituencies and want to meet with government officials,” she said.

There is still also a lack of trust in the hluttaw’s ability to deliver. Ma Zin Mar, 32, from Yuzana Garden City in Dagon Seikkan Township, said she felt ignored by her regional representatives.

“We are facing problems with the water supply and flooding regularly but we didn’t see MPs say anything about it in the assembly. I’ve no idea why they ignore us,” she said.

But U Aye Kyaw, executive director of the Open Myanmar Initiative, which analyses the activities of the regional parliaments, said voters were mostly unaware of what was taking place in the regional hluttaw, particularly compared to the national parliament.

“The MPs need to do a better job of informing the public of their activities, both in the assembly and their constituency,” he said.

Daw Nyo Nyo Thin was one of the few MPs in the previous assembly that sought to hold Myint Swe’s government to account. As an independent, she regularly called for greater budget scrutiny, opposed expensive government projects awarded to friendly private firms, and lobbied for improvements to municipal elections.

Although she is no longer in parliament, losing in last year’s election to an NLD candidate, she has continued to closely observe developments. She told Frontier the new Yangon hluttaw was “very active in ensuring the citizens are properly represented”.

Nevertheless, she expressed concern at the lack of a viable opposition. “There needs to be an opposition to point out what the public wants to the government,” she said.

To ensure greater scrutiny, she plans to form a Yangon Watch Group, which will examine and report on the activities of the regional government and hluttaw. The group plans to conduct its first activities at the end of the government’s 100-day plan, Nyo Nyo Thin added.

“The assembly needs to systematically examine the regional government and its project. Yangon is a huge city with many different issues, so they should meet regularly – at least every month.”

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