A constitutional referendum was scheduled to be held in

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

(Burma) in May 2015.No Constitutional Amendments Before Election: Shwe Mann
The Irrawaddy, 18 November 2014 If approved, the proposed reforms would have come into effect after the

general elections A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

in November. After most of the proposed amendments to the constitution were discarded, the referendum was postponed.

Electoral system

Proposed changes to the

Constitution of Myanmar The Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar ( my, ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေ, links=, transli ...

must be approved by at least 75% of both houses of the

Assembly of the Union The Pyidaungsu Hluttaw ( my, ပြည်ထောင်စု လွှတ်တော် lit. Assembly of the Union) is the ''de jure'' national-level bicameral legislature of Myanmar (officially known as the ''Republic of the Union of My ...

before going to a referendum. When the referendum is held, the changes must be approved by at least 50% of the registered voters, rather than 50% of those voting.

Referendum bill

The proposed constitutional amendment bill was discussed at the Assembly of the Union from 23 to 25 June 2015. Amendments were confined to four key clauses. *Article 436 for ''amending the constitution'' be lowered from its current figure of more than 75 percent to at least 70 percent of votes, which would have ended the effective veto of the military *Articles 59 and 60 for ''presidency qualifications'' which bars opposition leader

Aung San Suu Kyi Aung San Suu Kyi (; ; born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar (equivalent to a prime minister) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Myanm ...

from the presidency *Article 418(b) for ''

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distin ...

’s role in the state of emergency'' is declared The Assembly of the Union voted against most of the constitutional amendments on 25 June, ensuring that the military's veto power remained intact and that Aung San Suu Kyi could not become president in the 2015 general elections. The result was no surprise given that 25% of the seats in the Assembly are, by law, held by the military. The proposal aimed to reduce the vote share needed to amend the constitution to 70%. The Assembly of the Union approved only a minor change to article 59(d).

Cancellation

The

Union Election Commission The Union Election Commission ( my, ပြည်ထောင်စု ရွေးကောက်ပွဲ ကော်မရှင်, abbreviated UEC) is the national level electoral commission of Myanmar (Burma), responsible for organising a ...

requested to delay the referendum in July 2015 because it concerned only a minor change to article 59(d). On 22 July, the Assembly of the Union voted to postpone the referendum.

References

{{Burmese elections 2015 in Myanmar Referendums in Myanmar Cancelled referendums Constitutional referendums