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The current government is not a government with full democracy standards, public leader Aung San Suu Kyi said yesterday during a public rally in Loikaw, Kayah State.

"Now, our country has arrived at the most important time. In the past, there was the military rule by the SLORC and then the SPDC. After the 2010 election, this government administration [took office]. Some regard this government as a democracy government. I want to simply say that this government still has not meet with full democracy standards. It is still the period where we are trying to obtain democracy. That's why this is an important period," said Aung San Suu Kyi.

"At this time, the public must be able to see the truth as it is. They must be able to decide bravely and incisively. Only then, we will all be able to move towards a real democracy union. Some people ask is this all at the moment. True democracy is not just this. We still have a long way to go. However, we will be able to pass this successfully if we all walk on this road together," she said.

She rejected the claim that the National League for Democracy is a party that only represents Myanmar and not ethnic parties and assured the public that the party represents ethnic people.

Suu Kyi suggested that the amendment of the constitution and the election system will be discussed at the Parliament soon and the public should not ignore these discussions, but should focus on them and decide who are representing the truth.

Moreover, the public ought to be aware of voting and recognise that if they voted the wrong person, the representative they had chosen might harm them back, said Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi's public talk was attended by more than 10,000 residents from Loikaw, Demawso, Shadaw, Bawlakhae, Maesal Townships in Kayah State and Kalaw, Pinlaung and Hsihseng Townships in Shan State.

Security for the talk was guarded by over 150 members from police force of Kayah State.

Win Myint, Central Executive Committee Member of NLD, explained about amending the constitution and the election system. Then, Suu Kyi replied ten questions asked by the attendants.

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Existing govt not up to full democracy standards: Suu Kyi

By Kathryn Peters

We asked several participants in the upcoming Techonomy 2014 conference to write an article for us on what they are passionate about right now.

A federal election is one of the most logistically challenging business models you can imagine: its a business thats open only one day a year, staffed almost entirely by temps (practically volunteers) with limited advance training. Would-be customers have to sign up days or weeks in advance, but everything is still first-come, first-serve. Oh, and theres zero margin for error. No wonder the election administrators prayeris Lord, let this election not be close.

In 2010, my friend Seth Flaxman and I set out to simplify voting. We wanted to make voting fit the way we live. In an age when the Internet connects us to nearly all the goods, services, and experiences we can imagine, and has radically changed how we buy, rent, borrow, collaborate, and more, our elections would still be largely familiar to the 18th- and 19th-century bureaucrats who established the systems we still use to run them.No wonder nearly 60 percent of registered voters who dont cast ballots in a given election cite process issues when asked why they didnt vote. We created Democracy Works to ensure that no voter would ever miss another election because they didnt know how to participate.

Seth and I knew that real change calls for building innovations together with (and for) the administrators already running elections. But we also understood just how risk-averse election administrators are, even compared to other government offices. So we set out to innovate the fundamental relationship between a citizen and her democracy, from the outside. Democracy Works builtTurboVote, a site that lets anyone sign up, answer a few simple questions, and then receive all the materials and information needed to get registered, stay registered, and vote in every election. Through partnerships with colleges and non-profits, we even mail paper copies to voters, along with stamped, addressed envelopes for their local election office. Since our launch in 2011, weve helped over a quarter of a million people cast their ballots.

Voting at a town hall meeting in Calais, Vermont (image via Shutterstock)

But redesigning the voter experience for all 240 million or so eligible voters in the U.S. calls for more than giving them forms, texting them a polling place, and trusting that the rest will go smoothly. We know better than that. So, after the 2012 election, we set out to get acquainted with a few of the 8,000 or so local election officials across the country. We shadowed the real work of running elections, and met the dedicated staff who make it all happen. We embedded ourselves in election offices from the town of Brattleboro, Vermont (with 8,000 voters), to Travis County, Texas (with well over half a million).

What we found were dedicated civil servants testing their own improvements and making remarkable innovations. Those six offices were already incubating dozens of great ideas that just need more supportive technology and broader adoption. But where Travis County has the scale and influence to build a better voting machine from scratch, most of the others dont have either the resources to build sophisticated tools or the communications channels to publicize their creative hacks to election officials across the country.

As it turns out, local election administrators need and welcome external innovation support. They have big ideas they would like to try, if the right platforms and supporting tools existed. Theyll accept new processes, so long as theyve been rigorously tested and wont disrupt Election Day. And so we combed through all the great ideas they offered us and then spent 2014 working with nine election offices to design and develop Ballot Scout, a simple system to add intelligent mail barcodes to absentee ballots and give each one a tracking dashboard that lets them keep tabs on every ballot.

Going forward, this dual trackusing TurboVote to test new ideas and reach voters directly, and a network of local election offices to build sturdy infrastructure and deploy voter outreach tools after theyre well-tested and ready to scalewill make it possible to significantly improve voting.

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How Democracy Works Is Innovating Government From The Outside In

HONG KONG: Hundreds of Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters marched on Sunday to the Chinese government's offices in the semi-autonomous city, demanding direct talks with Beijing officials after six weeks of mass street rallies.

Demonstrators have been camped out on three major road junctions across the financial hub since September 28, calling for free leadership elections in 2017.

China insists that candidates for the city's top post must be vetted by a loyalist committee, which protesters say will result in the election of a pro-Beijing stooge.

Nearly 1,000 protesters marched from a park in the central financial district to Beijing's liaison office several miles away, some holding a banner reading: "We demand dialogue with the central government."

Protest leaders have asked to meet Beijing officials after talks with the local government in Hong Kong last month failed to bear any fruit.

Local officials offered tentative concessions to the protesters, saying they would file a report to Beijing about recent events and suggesting that both sides set up a committee to discuss further political reform beyond 2017. Neither idea met with much enthusiasm from the demonstrators.

"Students were showing good faith that if the Hong Kong government can't handle this, why don't we get in touch with the central authorities to discuss whether or not we can narrow the differences," said Joshua Wong, a teenage activist who has become one of the most prominent faces of the pro-democracy movement.

"But so far, we've been given the cold shoulder." Protest leaders have been mulling a trip to Beijing to press Chinese officials more directly.

The Hong Kong Federation of Students, which has been at the vanguard of the protests, has ruled out mooted plans to try to gatecrash this week's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, which will see global leaders including US President Barack Obama gather in Beijing.

A later trip to Beijing is still under consideration, although it is not clear whether activists would be allowed to travel there.

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Hong Kong democracy protesters march to Chinese government's offices

Interview with Jeremy Rifkin before he addressed the World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg

By: Jim Gibbons

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Interview with Jeremy Rifkin before he addressed the World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg - Video

Full Show 11/5/14: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
Thom discusses the midterm election results with The Nation #39;s John Nichols, the Center for Media and Democracy #39;s Brendan Fischer and Veteran Union Organize...

By: The Big Picture RT

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Full Show 11/5/14: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy - Video