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[INSIGHT] To ASEAN: Support the elected government, not the military junta
Sovereignty does not come from some thugs with guns storming the president’s office. Sovereignty ultimately stems from the mandate of the people.
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![[INSIGHT] To ASEAN: Support the elected government, not the military junta](https://img.jakpost.net/c/2021/02/15/2021_02_15_110578_1613371631._large.jpg)
A group of protesting engineers hold up signs calling for the release of detained Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi during a demonstration against the military coup in Naypyidaw on Feb. 15. (Agence France Presse/Str)
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SEAN’s go-to phrase in its usual nonresponse to human rights violations in Myanmar has been that their hands are tied due to their policy of noninterference in Myanmar’s sovereignty. Recently on Feb. 12, the Philippines used this very argument to distance itself from the United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution. In truth, this statement does not hold water in the current situation.
Sovereignty does not come from some thugs with guns storming the president’s office. Sovereignty ultimately stems from the mandate of the people.
On Nov. 8, 2020, the people of Myanmar clearly expressed their will by overwhelmingly voting for the National League for Democracy (NLD), which won 83 percent of available seats. This is where our sovereignty lays, on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty.
Unlike pre-2015 situations, we now have an elected government and an elected parliament. While our president and Cabinet are illegally imprisoned, including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, our democratically elected parliamentarians are still at large. They are now represented by the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH).
Pyidaungsu Hluttaw is the Myanmar name for the Union Parliament. The CRPH has appointed Dr. Sa Sa as its UN representative and Htin Lin Aung as its international relations representative.
If ASEAN nations respect Myanmar’s sovereignty as they claim, we request that you deal only with the CRPH and its representatives on any matters that relate to Myanmar, not with the military regime. If ASEAN nations persist in their claim that they respect Myanmar’s sovereignty while ignoring the pleas of her people and her sovereign parliament, this organization will become a laughing stock in the history books.
We urge ASEAN leaders to listen to the cries of the millions of people marching on the streets everyday: the cries of mothers who have lost their children to the military’s guns and the cries of toddlers whose parents were illegally arrested at gunpoint in front of them, just because their existence threatened the regime.
