Dr Maung Maung: Gentleman, Scholar, Patriot

Our Living Constitution II

483 Section VI, E. OUR LIVING CONSTITUTION [II] Reproduced from Maung Maung, “Our Living Constitution” in The Guardian VI, no. 2 (February 1959): 11–12, by permission of Daw Khin Myint, wife of the late Dr Maung Maung. The first instalment of Dr Maung Maung’s radio talk on the subject of “Our Living Constitution”, delivered during December 1958, appeared in the Guardian Magazine of January 1959. This present is the second instalment of his talk on the air in January. The Assistant Attorney General is giving a series of talks on the subject, once in English and once in Burmese every month. The magazine will publish these talks every month. The state is not supreme in our constitution; the people are the citizen does not exist for the state. It is the other way round. All this makes sweet saying, but in actual working it takes quite a lot to maintain a happy balance. If one man gets up in the state and says I am the state, and if he gets away with it, then we have a dictator. If it is not one man who does it, but a group of men, then we have a group dictatorship. If the people do it, then, as everybody will be doing just what he likes without let or hindrance, there is anarchy or mob rule. A genuine democracy needs a fine balance between the sovereignty of the people on the one hand and anarchy on the other. 06E฀DrMaung.indd฀฀฀483 1/24/08฀฀฀6:23:49฀PM 484 DR MAUNG MAUNG: Gentleman, Scholar, Patriot It needs a fine balance between the rights of the citizens on the one hand and their duties on the other. The citizen’s basic rights are well defined in our constitution. They are the deep wells of freedom from which many other freedoms flow. For example, there is the right of equality which gives every citizen equal opportunity in every field irrespective of his birth, religion, race or sex. Thus nobody may be denied the opportunity to go to school, or get work; men and women are equally eligible, and for equal work they get equal pay. Every citizen can, thus, reach the top positions in the state from the humblest birth; that is why it has been said that every man can become President of the Union. But, of course, not every man will end up as President; nor, needless to say, can everyone be President at the same time. Equality of opportunity is a right, but that does not mean that every citizen can have whatever he wants without working for it or deserving it. The right only means that the door is open; if one wants to get in and get on, one must walk in and try to get on. If there are rights, there are duties; the two go together. If there is a right to work, there is the duty to work. If there is equal opportunity, there is also the duty to use that opportunity well and the duty not to spoil other people’s opportunity. The duties of the citizen are left unwritten in our constitution. They are taken for granted, and it is presumed that a citizen of a democracy does not have to be told about them, that he knows them even instinctively. In the Russian constitution they have put it quite bluntly and harshly: “he who does not work, neither shall be eat.” Now in that principle of no work no food there is more than this idea of right and duty; there is an element of materialism. The state becomes a thing of business where one gets things if one pays for them, where everything, from the state to the individual, is priced and for sale, where man is not an individual but an article of utility or a unit of production. But if we take out the materialistic element in the principle, the right and duty principle remains, and that must be accepted. There must be a give and take in life; if one wants to enjoy a right, one must be prepared to perform the duty that is attached to it. Only politicians at election time will say that one can get everything, even the moon, by simply giving them one’s vote. 06E฀DrMaung.indd฀฀฀484 1/24/08฀฀฀6:23:50฀PM Our Living...