CONCLUSION: "Where the role of the courts is to assist in a state programme, rather than check executive power, policy directives can be implemented through the judiciary in the same way as through the administrative bureaucracy. By contrast, systems like those in Sri Lanka or Nepal may be defective and compromised but judges in them do still adjudicate more according to the terms of law than according to the dictates of executive officers. Ironically, a corrupted policy-implementing judicial system like that in Myanmar can be mistaken for an efficient system in contrast to its functionally separate counterparts, because its efficiency derives from the carrying out of orders and urgency to make money through the exercise of authority, not from integrity or professionalism of the sort that courts in other countries struggle to achieve, however imperfectly and half-heartedly. This is the real incongruity of habeas corpus as an element in the 2008 Constitution of Myanmar. Habeas corpus is premised on the idea that courts have the power to compel soldiers, police and other officials to follow their orders. In Myanmar, where the judiciary is a proxy for the executive, judges have this power only where they have the approval and backing of higher executive authorities. Whereas in certain authoritarian settings the courts have retained nominal legal power over other parts of government but have been unable or unwilling to exercise it at certain times because of extenuating circumstances, in Myanmar the problem is much more basic. Myanmar?s courts don?t have effective authority over other parts of government at all. Their capacity to review the activities of state agencies and agents is limited to what the executive permits them. Under these circumstances, not only is the reintroducing of habeas corpus a figment but so too is any constitutional commitment to protect the individual, because all such legal commitments are delimited by higher administrative imperatives. Only where legal and administrative objectives coincide can the former prevail. The incongruity of habeas corpus in the new constitution percolates throughout the charter?s contents, and through the extant state institutions that will be responsible for establishing new institutions in accordance with its terms following general elections. Where the armed forces rather than the judiciary have responsibility to safeguard the constitution and uphold the rule of law, statements of citizens? rights are perverse. Where the state has subordinated legality to policy and detached policy from any coherent ideology, no amount of technical or procedural rearranging can effect significant change. Because the new constitution is a vague expression that is not binding on its guardian, ultimately it contains no guarantees, whether for a political detainee, an ordinary under-trial accused or anyone else."