Constitution of Myanmar

Constitution of the Republic of the
Union of Myanmar
(2008)
Created9 April 2008
Ratified29 May 2008
Date effective31 January 2011
PurposeTo replace the 1974 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma
Politics of Myanmar
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Legislature (dissolved)
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The Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (Burmese: ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေ) is the supreme law of Myanmar. Myanmar's first constitution adopted by constituent assembly was enacted for the Union of Burma in 1947.[1] After the 1962 Burmese coup d'état, a second constitution was enacted in 1974. The country has been ruled by military juntas for most of its history.

The 2008 Constitution, the country's third constitution,[2] was published in September 2008[3] after a referendum, and came into force on 31 January 2011.[4] Under this current constitution, the Tatmadaw (Myanmar Armed Forces) retain significant control of the government, even before their coup of 2021. 25% of seats in the Parliament of Myanmar were reserved for serving military officers. The ministries of home, border affairs and defense were headed by a serving military officer.[5][6] The military also appointed one of the country's two vice presidents.[7] Hence, the country's civilian leaders have little influence over the security establishment.[5][6]

  1. ^ "Constitution of 1947 - Myanmar Law Library". www.myanmar-law-library.org (in French). Archived from the original on 20 October 2018. Retrieved 20 October 2018.
  2. ^ "Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (2008)" Archived 16 August 2019 at the Wayback Machine full text in English from Burma Library, last accessed 5 October 2010
  3. ^ "Online Burma Library > Main Library > Law and Constitution > Constitutional and parliamentary processes > National constitutions, draft constitutions, amendments and announcements (texts)". Burmalibrary.org. Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 16 January 2018.
  4. ^ "၂၀၀၈ ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေ" [2008 Constitution]. Constitutional Tribunal of the Union of Myanmar (in Burmese). March 2018. Archived from the original on 22 April 2022. ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေပြဋ္ဌာန်းချက်များနှင့်အညီ ၂၀၀၈ ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေသည် ပထမအကြိမ် ပြည်ထောင်စုလွှတ်တော်စတင်ကျင်းပသည့် ၃၁-၁-၂၀၁၁ ရက်နေ့တွင် စတင်အာဏာတည်ခဲ့သည်။
  5. ^ a b "Why is army still in Myanmar parliament?". BBC News. Archived from the original on 28 October 2017. Retrieved 16 January 2018.
  6. ^ a b Phil Robertson (12 November 2015). "Can Aung San Suu Kyi control Myanmar's military?". CNN. Archived from the original on 4 March 2018. Retrieved 16 January 2018.
  7. ^ "Managing the defence and security council". Mmtimes.com. 28 March 2016. Archived from the original on 13 September 2017. Retrieved 16 January 2018.