YANGON — The Myanmar Army has filed a complaint with the government to “take necessary actions” against Yangon Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein regarding recent remarks concerning the head of the military, according to a statement released by the Office of the Commander-in-Chief on Tuesday night.
The statement, quoting news reports which have gone viral on Facebook, explained that during a workshop on Sunday in Yangon, the chief minister reportedly said that “there are no civil-military relations in the democratic era” and that “the military’s commander-in-chief position is the same as the level of director-general, according to the [state] protocol.”
However, Myanmar’s State Protocol, released by the National League for Democracy (NLD) government in April last year ranks the military chief, Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing, eighth in the leadership hierarchy after the Union Chief of Justice, while chief ministers are ranked at 19. The state protocol in total lists 36 people, from President U Htin Kyaw to directors from the Ministry of Defense.
The NLD administration has attracted the military’s ire with their comments twice. In May, the party’s spokesperson U Win Htein said he suspected that the military may have been involved in spreading rumors aimed at destabilizing the NLD government. When the military complained, he said he didn’t intend to make accusations against anyone, and that his comments were a “slip of the tongue.”
