The Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (2008) is the third

Constitution of Myanmar The Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar ( my, ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေ, links=, transli ...

after 1947 and 1974 constitutions which lost force after military coups. It is part of the seven steps road map announced by then Prime Minister of

State Peace and Development Council The State Peace and Development Council ( my, နိုင်ငံတော် အေးချမ်းသာယာရေး နှင့် ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေး ကောင်စီ ; abbreviated SPDC or , ) was the offi ...

government General

Khin Nyunt General Khin Nyunt (; ; born 23 October 1939) is a Burmese military officer and politician. He held the office of Chief of Intelligence and was Prime Minister of Myanmar from 25 August 2003 until 18 October 2004. Early life and education Kh ...

on 30 August 2003. One of the seven steps include recalling the National Convention for the drafting of new constitution. The National Conventions was adjourned on 31 March 1996 by

State Law and Order Restoration Council State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * '' State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our ...

government. The convention began on 17 May 2004 and was attended by 1076 of invited delegates and representatives from 25 ethnic ceasefire groups. After several sessions, the convention concluded with the adoption of fundamental principles for a 54-member constitution drafting commission, which was later formed by the SPDC. On 19 February 2008, the SPDC announced that the commission had finalised the drafted constitution and planned to hold a

referendum A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a Direct democracy, direct vote by the Constituency, electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a Representative democr ...

in May 2008. On 10 May 2008 (24 May 2008 in some townships), the 2008 constitutional referendum was held in

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

, and the SPDC announced 93.82% of the voters voted for the constitution. However, there has been widespread criticism of the process as the

Cyclone Nargis Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm Nargis ( my, နာဂစ်, ur, نرگس ) was an extremely destructive and deadly tropical cyclone that caused the worst natural disaster in the recorded history of Myanmar during early May 2008. The cyclo ...

hit Myanmar a few days before the referendum and questions about whether the overall process was free and fair. The 2008 Constitution came into force on 31 January 2011. The Tatmadaw (Myanmar Armed Forces) retained significant control of the government under the 2008 constitution. 25% of seats in the

Parliament of Myanmar The Pyidaungsu Hluttaw ( my, ပြည်ထောင်စု လွှတ်တော် lit. Assembly of the Union) is the ''de jure'' national-level bicameral legislature of Myanmar (officially known as the ''Republic of the Union of My ...

were reserved for serving military officers. The ministries of home, border affairs and defense had to be headed by a serving military officer. The military also appoints one of the country's two vice presidents. Hence, the country's civilian leaders have little influence over the security establishment.

See also