Aung San Suu Kyi takes seat in Myanmar's parliament for first time

NAY PYI TAW, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Myanmar's National League for Democracy (NLD) and parliament representative-elect, arrived at the legislature building in Nay Pyi Taw Wednesday morning and started to take seat in the parliament for the first time.

Suu Kyi, along with all 42 other elected law makers of her party except three, who are on official visit to Australia, were sworn in to the parliament's two houses about half an hour after their arrival in the presence of the two-house speakers and other existing parliament members using the existing office oath word of "safeguarding the constitution" as a concession to the oath word issue.

A total of 34 NLD elected MPs including Suu Kyi and excluding the absent three took the seats of the House of Representatives, while four others took the seats of the House of Nationalities.

As far as the House of Representatives is concerned, the total number of the attendees on Wednesday's session including the NLD freshers amounts to 343.

NLD, in Monday's announcement, had insisted on its original stance of "respecting the constitution" rather than "safeguarding the constitution" despite decision to make parliament debut taking the unchanged oath word as a flexibility for a peaceful compromise to end the standoff.

The NLD's move was also said to have been made to fulfill the wishes of the broad mass of people and voters and in response to the appeal made by lawmakers of nationalities parties to resolve the oath word issue from within the assembly.

Myanmar parliament's two-house sessions resumed separately on April 23 to continue discussions on some law amendment bills remained to be dealt with after adjournment for a month, but NLD postponed its attendance then for it wanted to so change the said oath word of the office from "safeguarding the constitution" to " respecting the constitution" as already amended in the electoral law that opened way for Suu Kyi and her party to enter the by- elections.

In the April 1 by-elections, NLD won 43 out of 45 open parliamentary seats, of which 37 with the House of Representatives (Lower House), 4 with the House of Nationalities (Upper House) and 2 with the region or state parliament.

NLD prioritizes three points out of its main aims fir its by- elections entry, namely rule of law, internal peace and constitution amendments.

There is a total of 664 seats with the union parliament, of which 440 with the House of Representatives including 330 elected ones and 25-percent directly-nominated military representatives, while there are 224 seats with the House of Nationalities including 168 elected ones and 25-percent such military representatives.

Of the 440 seats of the House of Representatives, the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) holds nearly 60 percent, while the NLD takes only 8 percent and the remaining go to other parties which won in the November general election in 2010 including National Unity Party (NUP), SNDP, Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP), National Democratic Force (NDF) and All Mon Region Democracy Party (AMRDP).