"PROPOSALS to amend the 2008 Constitution are finally being discussed in the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw and the debate has been lively. There have been heated exchanges between members of the politically dominant National League for Democracy and unelected military MPs and lawmakers from the Union Solidarity and Development Party, who oppose the NLD’s proposals for charter reform. Debate has been so robust at times that the speaker has directed that some outbursts be expunged from the parliamentary record. After its landslide victory in 2015, the NLD waited until January 2019 – almost three years after taking office – to begin implementing its election campaign pledge to reform the constitution. The NLD took a similar approach to that adopted by Thura U Shwe Mann in his capacity as speaker of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw during the USDP government, and appointed a constitutional amendment joint committee, which was tasked to prepare a draft bill to amend the charter. The unelected Tatmadaw MPs objected to the 45-member committee as being unlawful. While the NLD was trying to draft a constitutional amendment bill that incorporated the opinions of all parties in the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, USDP and Tatmadaw MPs submitted five of their own amendment bills. In early February, the NLD-controlled joint bill committee finalised two amendment bills and sent them to parliament for debate alongside the five USDP and military bills. One bill contains changes that would also require approval at a national referendum, while the other contains those changes that only require Pyidaungsu Hluttaw approval. We can learn from these seven bills about the changes sought to the constitution by the NLD and ethnic parties on one side, and by the Tatmadaw and USDP lawmakers, on the other..."