“We’re facing an uphill battle,” said the 35-year-old novice legislator. “Most of us have little experience in government, but we are very determined to make it work.”

The new NLD members flooded the imposing parliament building on Monday, many clad in the traditional burnt orange tunics that have been worn by the party for decades and overwhelmed the olive green of the army bloc as the freshly elected legislature met for the first time since Suu Kyi’s massive poll win in November.

Expectations are sky-high after the NLD won about 80 per cent of elected seats, crushing the junta-linked ruling party and setting the stage to replace the semi-civilian government of President Thein Sein.

“It was like a dream because Daw Aung San Suu Kyifought alone against the military – and then she won,” said Khin Maung Myint, a first-time NLD lawmaker from Hpakant, a remote town in the north of the country famous for its jade production.

The former jade and gems trader clutched a black suitcase given to parliamentarians last week containing a starter kit for first-time MPs, including a copy of Myanmar’s military-drafted constitution from 2008 and a basic guide to lawmaking.

“It did not only shake Myanmar, it shook the whole world,” he said.

The 255 members of the NLD’s lower house caucus come from diverse backgrounds – artists, former political prisoners and small-scale entrepreneurs warily wandered the corridors of power together as they gathered to choose a speaker for the chamber.

But they comprise two main groups: experienced pro-democracy stalwarts who were persecuted and imprisoned under the junta, and members of a younger generation that joined the party after the country embarked on a process of reform in 2011.

The two groups share two things in common: they will be forced by the 2008 constitution to work with former enemies from the military; and they have very little experience of governing.

FINE LINE

Suu Kyi has to tread a fine line, compromising between the change-hungry party grassroots, the general public and the army that still holds a quarter of seats in parliament and controls a large chunk of Myanmar’s state apparatus.

Choosing the speaker is another stop on the NLD’s journey that began last September, when the candidates hit the campaign trail and canvassed votes in a well-organised operation, which included rigorous media training.

Some activists left the party over Suu Kyi’s choice of candidates as she focused on creating a disciplined caucus, leaving some experienced activists out and making room for well-educated younger members who can enact laws – and also could be more willing to engage with the army.

Myo Zaw Aung was expelled from university in 2002 and was acting as Suu Kyi’s bodyguard a year later during what has become known as the Depayin Massacre, when her motorcade was attacked by pro-junta thugs and 70 of her supporters were killedin what was seen as an assassination attempt.

“I was arrested and tortured, but I can forgive the military. We now have to work together to ensure a smooth transition,” he said.

The NLD resembles less a modern political party with a cohesive agenda, and more a broad movement united by years of struggle for democracy under Suu Kyi’s charismatic leadership.

“I feel like the parliament is very big and marvellous, but still most people are poor,” said Myint Lwin, a newly-elected NLD lawmaker. “I want to fulfil the people’s wishes as much as I can and make their lives as marvellous as this parliament.”

The challenge now facing Myanmar’s new ruling party is to turn vague aspirations into a coherent policy platform.

King Ngaih Mang, 42, a new lawmaker from the Zomi Congress for Democracy Party, an ethnic party from Myanmar’s impoverished Chin State, offered an insight into the scale of the task.

“Our region still doesn’t have paved roads, it still has roads that were paved during the Second World War,” she said. What we need for our region is the infrastructure, roads, healthcare, all of which are very necessary.”

– Reuters

“One of the striking aspects about this exhibition is that judges are looking for the best artists and the best art, subjectively defined. And one can see very clear linkages and connections among the works,” says Harger, who is also the museum’s executive director.

This year’s chosen works show the artists’ approach to social, economic and geopolitical issues and their attempts to convert personal experiences into universal feelings.

In When Need Moves the Earth, Thai artist Sutthirat Supparinya, who was nominated in the video and digital category, shows two power projects in her home country. Through her camera, she talks about the challenges to the environment posed by the Srinakarin dam and the Mae Moh lignite mine.

“The two constructions are located in a sensitive geological environment. I want to explore the impact of human and industrial activities on the (sites’) natural surroundings,” she says.

Huang Po-chih, an artist from Taipei, provides a microcosmic insight into industrialization in Taiwan and on the mainland. His installation Production Line explores agricultural recession and individuals within the structures of manufacturing and consumption.

He links his mother’s story with the story of “Auntie Huang”, another woman from southern China’s Shenzhen city, where many cloth factories get their money from Taiwan. The two women share a similar background: Both went to cities from the countryside and ended up working on such production lines.

Huang put up a youthful photo of his mother at the exhibition venue and a photo of the other woman facing away from the visitors. Near them he has placed a stack of jeans made in the factories of Taipei and Shenzhen, with the words, “Sorry, I don’t have an off today”, projected on a nearby wall.

“In Taiwan, nobody cares about personal stories. People always focus on the economy, finance and business. That’s why I try to look at the very small universe of individuals,” says Huang, who was one of the award-winners.

Shanghai-based sculptor Yang Mushi also dwells on individuals. His installation-like sculpture on show, called Grind, displays several groups of objects in different formations – some look like piles of timber and some like sharpened pencils. The articles, placed on a large aluminum plate, took two years to make at a Shanghai factory. He then darkened their surfaces with lacquer.

He says the objects reflect the various states of his mind.

“I felt rather pessimistic and pained during the production process. I saw the materials becoming smaller inside the machines, and felt my own life fritter away.”

He sees the process as a confrontation with his “other” side that easily blends into the social mainstream. He says the work helps him cool down, release his anxiety and maintain a distance from his surroundings.

Zhang Wei, a Beijing-based photo artist and awards nominee, says many young artists today “simply sell ideas or depend on impulse to create”.

“But when one reaches middle age, an artist should rely on his experiences to go on.”

If you go 10 am-7 pm, through March 27. Level 3, ArtScience Museum, Marina Bay Sands, 6 Bayfront Avenue, Singapore. +65-6688-8888.

The first initiative, a US$17 million programme known as the Berbak Green Prosperity Project, will help to restore the water of peat swamp forests in Jambi. The restoration of this system will help to eventually decrease the prevalence of peat fires in the province.

“The Berbak project will also provide training to increase production of local agriculture and will facilitate smallholder oil palm certifications and community-based palm oil mill effluent renewable energy systems,” the US embassy said in a statement on Monday.

The second initiative is a $13 million agreement with three palm oil mills in Riau Province for biogas power plants utilizing palm oil mill effluent and assisting independent smallholders in each mill’s supply base to become RSPO certified.

This grant alone is expected to produce 3 MW of renewable energy from biogas, the equivalent amount of electricity needed to power 9,000 rural homes; capture 117,000 tCO2e/year, which is equivalent to emissions from vehicles driving 785 million kilometers per year. It is also expected that the project can improve productivity and management practices for 2,000 independent smallholders.

The US embassy said these two programmes, both of which will be implemented by an Indonesian agency, the Millennium Challenge Account – Indonesia (MCA-I), were part of the US government’s overall support for Indonesia’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions and protect vulnerable peatlands.

Apart from these projects, the US, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has recently launched a new portfolio of projects to address climate change and support Indonesia’s goal of reducing emissions by 29 percent by 2030.

According to the embassy, USAID will partner with the Indonesian government to help conserve and sustainably manage 8.4 million hectares of forest and peatland that can serve as carbon sinks.

The embassy further said that USAID would help eliminate 4.5 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and leverage $800 million in private sector investment in clean energy for five million citizens.

“USAID will also help protect local communities from the effects of a changing climate and more extreme weather by assisting national and provincial governments implement effective climate change adaptation strategies.”

The US embassy said USAID had also invested more than $38 million into environmental initiatives in 2015.

“Moving forward, we have a planned investment of $47 million for forest conservation and land use planning, $24 million for land use policy and conservation advocacy, $19 million for global climate change adaptation, $19 for clean energy and $5 million for forest research,” it said.

“These programmes are a sign of our commitment to working in partnership with Indonesia to combat the causes of climate change and to help the country achieve its goal of reducing emissions in the future.”

But popularity and power are only the beginning for the Nobel laureate and her hundreds of new MPs, many of whom have no experience of public office.

Here are a few of their main challenges:

Picking a president

===================

Suu Kyi’s party can form a government, but who will lead it?

The Nobel laureate is barred from the presidency by a clause in the junta-drafted constitution because her children are British.

Many believe it was scripted specifically to block her path to power.

She has said she will rule “above” a puppet president, who will replace outgoing President Thein Sein in late March.

If she does, that position is not covered in the constitution and could rile the powerful military who have ceded some powers but retain 25 per cent of seats in parliament — and with them an effective veto on major charter change.

Military still in play

======================

Given the presidency issue, Suu Kyi may need to sweeten up an army which held her prisoner for some 15 years.

Observers say good relations between Suu Kyi and the military will be crucial to get anything done.

That is because the military’s political powers are not limited to parliament.

The 2008 constitution that was scripted under ex-dictator Than Shwe hands the army chief control over three key ministries: home affairs, defence and border affairs.

Home affairs is a bureaucratic juggernaut and includes the police force and the sprawling General Administration Department (GAD), a vast network that forms the backbone of the civil service.

Beyond this soldiers are also in active combat as civil wars continue to rage in parts of Myanmar’s ethnic minority borderlands.

Uncertain peace

===============

Myanmar’s ethnic minorities have fought for greater autonomy for more than 50 years.

Thein Sein signed ceasefires with several of the country’s major ethnic armed groups, but heavy fighting continues, particularly in Kachin and Shan states.

As a member of the ethnic majority Bamar, Suu Kyi has sometimes been viewed with suspicion by these groups.

But the NLD won handsomely in ethnic states and Suu Kyi has pledged to work towards a federal system.

She also must tackle the scourge of anti-Muslim sentiment that has fomented since an explosion of unrest in Rakhine state in 2012 between Buddhists and minority Rohingya communities.

Tens of thousands of Muslim Rohingya are still trapped in bleak displacement camps and the next government faces pressure from the international community to find a solution for them.

But they will be wary of enraging Rakhine Buddhists, who largely see the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.

Economic development

====================

Myanmar’s economy has surged under reforms by Thein Sein’s government. Foreign investment swept in as most Western sanctions were lifted.

Mobile phones are now ubiquitous, car imports are rising fast and several special economic zones are in the pipeline.

The economy grew at 8.5 per cent in the 2014/15 fiscal year, but the World Bank expects this to moderate to 6.5 per cent this year.

But poverty is still a problem for huge swathes of a country that relies on agriculture.

With many of the previous government’s so-called “quick win” policies already enacted, the NLD has said it will focus on luring more international investment.

Speedy development is held back by patchy electricity supply, poor road and rail networks and an unskilled workforce.

Graft is also endemic. Myanmar ranked in joint 147th place out of 168 in Transparency International’s 2015 corruption perception index.

There is also the question of febrile relations with China — Myanmar’s biggest trading partner.

– AFP

“A special medal is designed for each category and is awarded once a year. Every year all qualified medalists already selected in the previous year are re-evaluated, and are added to the new qualified candidates of this year.”

http://www.lianorg.com is an authentic and professional tourist information website that provides overall travel information, published in Chinese.

On the website, each tourist attraction enjoys an individual webpage, where tourists can find useful practical information including GPS maps and photos.

The Vat Phou temple complex is located in Champassak province and was listed as Laos’ second World Heritage Site in 2001.

According to a UNESCO report, the Vat Phou temple is a remarkably well-preserved planned landscape more than 1,000 years old. It was shaped to express the Hindu vision of the relationship between nature and humanity, using an axis from hilltop to riverbank to lay out a geometric pattern of temples.

Vat Phou bears exceptional testimony to the cultures of South-East Asia, in particular the Khmer Empire.

Mr Oudomsy said over 60,000 tourists visited Vat Phou in 2015, an increase of 10 percent compared to the previous year. However, Chinese tourists represented only 10 percent of the total figure.

“I’m optimistic that more Chinese will visit Vat Phou in the near future because this site is being promoted through the Chinese website,” he said.

“Tourists can enjoy a number of facilities while visiting Vat Phou including coffee and souvenir shops, a museum and tour buses.”

Champassak provincial authorities are preparing to mark the 15th anniversary of Vat Phou being declared Laos’ second World Heritage Site.

An official ceremony will take place from February 20-22. Other related activities such as a trade fair will take place from February 16.

The grand event will feature a number of activities including parades, sports and cultural performances. A cultural performance group from India has confirmed its participation.

Performance troupes from neighbouring countries including Vietnam and Thailand have been invited to attend but have yet to confirm their presence.

“This is Myanmar’s first parliament in years that was chosen by the people,” said Pyon Cho, who is now a lawmaker and spent20 years in jail as a member of the anti-junta group the 88Generation Students.

“We have the majority. We have the duty to fulfil our manifesto and change the lives of the people in this country.”

Some new members looked disoriented as they wandered through the enormous parliament building in the purpose-built capital raised by the junta in secret from the rice paddies.

The presidential nomination process is likely to take place later in the month, NLD members said.

Under the 2008 constitution, Suu Kyi is barred from taking the position because her children are not Myanmar citizens. She has given no indication as to who will take over from outgoing President Thein Sein and the NLD has no clear number two.

IN CONTROL

Suu Kyi has said she will be “above the president” and incomplete control of the government, but the NLD has not explained how she will do this.

Each of the parliament’s two chambers will choose a presidential candidate and the military officials who hold a quarter of seats will also put forward their own nominee.

A combined session of the chambers will then vote on the three candidates. The winner will become president, with the other two serving as vice presidents.

This week, the NLD will focus on appointing parliamentary speakers, who were announced last week. It will also prepare for the start of state and regional assemblies on Feb. 8, some in places dominated by large ethnic minorities such as Shan State in the east or Rakhine in the west.

Expectations are towering for Suu Kyi, who is regarded with an almost religious zeal in the Southeast Asian nation. Suu Kyi spent 15 years under house arrest after the NLD won an election in 1990. The junta never recognised the result of that vote.

Myanmar’s 51.5 million people expect the NLD to fix everything, from completing the transformation of an economy stunted by decades of isolation to bringing peace to states riven by ethnic conflict.

“They (people) hope that every problem will be solved automatically after the NLD becomes the government, FDI (foreign direct investment) will come in,” said Shwe Mann, the outgoing speaker of parliament, who is close to Suu Kyi despite being a former leader of the junta-linked Union Solidarity and Development Party.

“To accomplish the challenges, they need to choose the right people and put them in right positions,” said Shwe Mann. “This is also my main concern, because it will decide the performance of her government.”

– Reuters

Childcare centres at workplaces made up 31 per cent of more than 1,200 childcare centres here last year, up from 26 per cent in 2012, according to figures from the Early Childhood Development Agency.

The increase in such workplace childcare centres comes amid higher demand for childcare services as more women enter the workforce.

It also follows an enhancement of the Workplace Child Care Centre Scheme in 2013, to allow all building owners or employers to apply for grants that cover up to half the cost of converting their premises into a childcare centre for employees. Only government-owned buildings were eligible previously.

Firms with childcare centres in their office premises said there was high demand for such services and they wanted to support their staff.

OCBC – the first bank here to have an on-site childcare centre – partnered the National Trades Union Congress twice to set up The Little Skool-House centres.

One is at OCBC Centre in Raffles Place, set up in 2007, and the other was set up in Tampines Junction office complex in 2010 to meet the needs of parents in the bank’s Tampines branch in a building nearby.

OCBC’s head of human resource planning Jacinta Low said: “We want to give (our) staff peace of mind, knowing that their child is well cared for in a safe environment, and encourage employees to be more involved in the crucial growing years of their children.”

But operators noted some companies may not be keen to have childcare facilities on their premises.

Ms June Rusdon, chief executive of Busy Bees Asia, which owns brands such as Learning Vision, said: “Some building owners have the perception that having a childcare centre negatively affects the ’image’ of their building.”

Kinderland Educare Services general manager Seet Lee Kiang also noted that some owners of private buildings seem less keen on allocating space for childcare facilities.

Meanwhile, firms said they benefit from having workplace childcare centres.

IT firm NCS’ human resource head Doreen Loh said: “We’ve observed higher productivity and lower absenteeism rate among the parents.” Parents said having children in centres at their workplace and not near their homes has benefits.

Mr Derrick Sim, 31, who co-owns a marine services company with his father, works in an office on Sentosa. His two-year-old daughter is enrolled at Islander Pre-School.

“My company is a family business, so having my child enrolled in a centre on Sentosa allows for more opportunity for family bonding, as both my father and I can spend time with my daughter,” he said.

OCBC process and service innovation manager Rebecca Chiew, 32, has two sons in the pre-school in OCBC Centre.

She said: “I get to spend more time with them during our morning and evening commutes. Having the pre-school and my office in the same building is also useful during emergencies – I can rush to them quickly when the need arises.”

“The enterprises play a crucial role here, as they exert significant influence over public revenues. In recent years, they accounted for a major portion of all government revenues and expenditures.

“But these enterprises are carrying out their activities with very little formal internal oversight and less public transparency,” said Patrick Heller, director of legal and economic programmes and co-author of the report.

Myanmar’s first EITI report, covering fiscal 2013-14, showed that the government received US$3.1 billion (Bt111.5 billion) from the extractive sector.

Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), a state-owned company, retained $1.3 billion of this revenue for its own operating expenses and raw materials. The four state-owned mining companies collectively retained about $230 million.

Heller warned against the increasing financial autonomy of the enterprises and poor transparency of the “other accounts”.

“Though we have not seen any published figures on the exact size to which these accounts have grown, some of them appear to have reached billions of dollars,” he said.

He noted that MOGE’s retained revenue in the year was nearly twice the government’s health budget of $750 million and higher than the education budget of $1.1 billion.

The report also highlighted that military-affiliated companies like Myanmar Economic Corporation and Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd (UMEHL) are playing a key role in the mining industry.

Though they are private companies, many stakeholders in Myanmar indicated that these companies play important quasi-official roles in determining who gets access to mining projects and in distributing the benefits of extraction, overlapping the authority of SOEs in confusing ways and impeding public accountability.

It suggested the setting of revenue retention policies matched to commercial strategies, enhancing public disclosure of key data, reducing any unnecessary overlaps between the state-owned enterprises and other public entities and ensuring strong mechanisms for internal accountability are in place.

Land grabs will be another headache for the government. In its report submitted to parliament in July, the land confiscation investigation commission said that up to January 21, it had submitted 19,836 land dispute case files to the government. Of them, 6,423 cases remain unresolved.

In Yangon region, authorities returned 359,902 acres of confiscated land and paid 523,099 kyat (B14,400) in compensation.

New cases keep springing up

Last week, around 600 huts in Mingaladon housing 2,500 people were bulldozed. Next to their land is a beer factory of UMEHL. Evicted resident Hla Hla Kyi, 58, said he had lived there for 15 years and earned his living through farming.

“We don’t know where we will go,” he said.

The demolition came only a few days after residents received the eviction notice from UMEHL, he said.

As of Friday, it was reported that they

were forced to live in bamboo huts next to main roads, along with squatters evicted from other parts of Yangon. The Yangon City Development Committee estimates that Yangon houses about 300,000 squatters in 33 townships.

Khin Hlaing, a member of the committee, said their houses would be demolished but little by little to minimise the impacts on the squatters. He said the next government might be able to offer the squatters permanent accommodation.