Members of Burma’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, or NLD, are calling for an overhaul to the party’s decision-making bodies, including its nine-member Central Executive Committee, or CEC, said senior party members.

Over the past month, NLD members of parliament and the head organizers of the party’s state and division branch offices have met in temporary offices across the country to discuss party reforms.

Most agree that the party must expand the CEC, entrusted with making the party’s major decisions, to include younger members. They also agree that the party must expand its Central Committee, or CC, which is subordinate to the CEC and has more than a dozen members.

Although party offices have been closed since May 30 of last year - after the government-orchestrated attack on the opposition’s motorcade in which dozens, possibly hundreds, of opposition members and supporters were killed - the NLD has conducted its activities at temporary offices set up at
the homes of senior party leaders across the country.

In Magwe Division, NLD members met on July 30. The next day the division chairman took the proposal to the party’s headquarters in Rangoon.

Similar meetings have been held throughout the country this month, with division and state party leaders making voice recordings of upcountry members expressing their wishes to reform the party. The tapes and written proposals will be delivered to the NLD headquarters in Rangoon, and
forwarded to party leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under detention in her home in the Burmese capital.

NLD spokesman U Lwin said the nine central executive committee members, including Suu Kyi and party chairman Tin Oo, who is also under house arrest, would respond to the proposal some time in the future, but he did not elaborate.