The 2008 constitution, which is the constitution of the military dictatorship, which existed between 1962 and 2008, gives to the military control over three key ministries: Border Affairs, Defence, and Home Affairs.
Border Affairs really gives the military complete control over the entire border area of Myanmar, which borders on Bangladesh, India, China, Thailand, Malaysia, and so on. There you have one powerful ministry.
You have the Department of Defence, which is the largest-spending ministry in the country.
You also have the Department of Home Affairs, which is all of the internal affairs of the country, including the administration of local communities.
Any information coming from local villages—all of that information—comes in to the home affairs department. They're responsible for all internal security matters, all surveillance issues. Anything to do with what's going on in terms of cellphone use and anything else is the Department of Home Affairs. They have complete control over that.
When people talk about Aung San Suu Kyi and say, “She's the de facto leader: she can do this. She can snap her fingers”, you say no. What happened after 2008 was that eventually, over a period of many years, Aung San Suu Kyi, having been for a long time under house arrest, came out from house arrest and was allowed to participate in politics and to lead a political party, the National League for Democracy, which was her father's party and which was given the ability to run.
She can't be the president of the country; the constitution discriminates against her because of the fact that her children have British passports. She is Minister of Foreign Affairs and she has a position called “State Counsellor”. There's no reference to a state counsellor in the constitution of Myanmar. The military controls 25% of the seats in the lower house of the Parliament of Myanmar, and they can block any further constitutional change.
That's the status quo; that's the situation.
The NLD have their own policies and their own politics. Certainly, Aung San Suu Kyi has made a couple of statements over time, in the last six months, indicating that she's very concerned that the peace process be maintained and keep going. There is still extensive conflict going on in the north of the country, in the area called Kachin State, in Chin State, and in Shan State, among the Mon people.
Even in Karen there's still fighting going on. It's not just little fighting; it's bombs dropping on houses. I have text messages from people, because of the age in which we're living, telling me that this is what's happening in my country at this point, at this moment in time.
I think we need to understand that the notion that this is automatically a sort of democracy in transition.... There's nothing automatic about it at all. It's a military government with civilian participation, in which the leader of the civilian participation is Aung San Suu Kyi. I think we have to develop a greater degree of understanding of what the situation is inside the country before we conclude that certain people are responsible for certain things. I don't think we entirely know the answers to those questions.