RANGOON — At least 20 lawmakers from the National League for Democracy in regional legislatures and the Union Parliament have been singled out by constituents for being rude, said Myo Nyunt, an inspector at the ruling NLD’s complaint center, on Tuesday.
He declined to provide the names of the lawmakers or their constituencies. But he said that the majority of the complaints were leveled at members of divisional and state parliaments because they have more frequent interactions with their constituents.
The NLD center has called the complainants to verify their reports and, after listening to their testimony, will determine whether to take action against the accused lawmakers. The center declined to give details on whether it had already made decisions to reprimand any of the lawmakers named by complainants, nor offer indication of what form the punishment might take.
Khine Zin Oo, an NLD lawmaker from the Irrawaddy Division legislature, was surprised to hear that some of her colleagues were not polite to their constituents, saying she is a regular visitor to villages in her district.
“I have never heard of anything like this before,” she said.
The NLD contested more than 1,000 races nationwide in the November 2015 election, winning nearly 80 percent of seats in the Union Parliament and a comparable proportion in most of the regional legislatures.
Perhaps growing pains are to be expected: The vast majority of the party’s winners are first-term lawmakers, and Aung San Suu Kyi has sought to run a tight ship as leader of the party, warning its members of the dangers of corruption and enrolling the new parliamentarians in capacity-building seminars. The expectations-laden new class of NLD legislators also agreed to take a pay cut earlier this year.
