Workshop
Details
Constitutional experts from Australia, Germany, Singapore inter alia convened in a three-day workshop to share some of the “technologies of democracy” with workshop participants in Myanmar and to contribute to the discourse of constitutional reform and constitutional design at a crucial time in Myanmar’s transition to democracy.
The aim of the workshop, held in co-operation with Sydney Law school, was emphatically declared not to be that of providing "a blueprint" or draft of a constitution to Myanmar but to give such a choice to the people of Myanmar themselves through a participatory and self-sustaining process. Rather contemporary political and legal scholarship has accumulated enough expertise to deliberate the challenges faced by transitional democracies on a comparative agenda, especially on the methods of electoral reforms, public commissions and formalising justice mechanisms.
Thus the goal was to share knowledge about the various constitutional options that are “on the table” in a country moving towards democracy; to show what the success rate of these various options has been in the transitional democracies, and to illustrate the implications, and consequences (both positive and negative) of various constitutional choices.
