An Election Not Worthy of Support By U WIN TIN

An Election Not Worthy of Support

By WIN TIN

Published: September 30, 2010

The New York Times

YANGON, MYANMAR — Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, recently said the world must exercise “utmost vigilance” to ensure the approaching elections in Myanmar (Burma) are free and fair.

We are disappointed in such comments, which focus on the election as something important for our country, as something worth waiting and watching for, although this election is not the solution for Burma.

The elections, scheduled for Nov. 7, are designed to legalize military rule in Burma under the 2008 constitution, which was written to create a permanent military dictatorship in our country.

After the election, the constitution will come into effect, a so-called civilian government will be formed by acting and retired generals who all are under the military commander-in-chief, and the people of Burma will legally become the subjects of the military.

Our party, the National League for Democracy, and our ethnic allies have refused to accept the regime’s constitution and have decided to boycott the elections. The military regime’s constitution and severely restricting election laws demonstrated to all of us the true intention the regime has for this election — the legalization and legitimization of military rule in our country.

We refuse to abandon our aspirations for democracy in Burma and give the regime the legitimacy it wants for its elections. With millions of people of Burma supporting our position, we hoped the international community would understand the regime’s intentions as clearly as we do and pressure the regime to stop its unilateral and undemocratic process.

Until recently, the United Nations demanded the regime commit itself to an all-parties inclusive, participatory, free and fair process through political dialogue with democratic opposition and representatives of ethnic minorities. But now an important phrase — “all-parties inclusive” — is surprisingly excluded from their statements and speeches.

Although Ms. Pillay urged the world to exercise “utmost vigilance,” there is no need to wait until the Election Day to make a judgment. The election commission was appointed by the regime and filled with loyalists who unilaterally decided that many candidates are ineligible to run. The electoral laws and by-laws impose severe restrictions on political parties. Thousands of political prisoners — including our leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi — are not allowed to participate in the election or be members of the parties.

The regime’s prime minister and cabinet ministers have switched to civilian dress, transformed their mass organization into their political party, and are campaigning with the use of state properties, resources, funds and threats. The election commission is shamelessly violating its own rules in favor of the prime minister’s party and other proxy parties of the regime.

Is it really necessary for the international community to wait until election day to see whether the elections are free and fair?

Unfortunately, some European countries are not only watching the regime’s elections, but also supporting them. They discussed with us their belief that the election is the only game in town, and suggested that we, the National League for Democracy, should participate.

When we explained our rationale for not legitimizing military rule, they turned to others and now help them to make their way in the regime’s election game. They have gone so far as to help pro-regime academics and opportunists travel to Europe to promote the regime’s election and gather support for their favorite parties.

Even though some democratic parties have European support, their chances of winning seats in the election are very slim, as more restrictions on their campaign activities are revealed each day. The regime is determined to capture almost all of the contested seats in the national and state parliaments by use of fraud and threats.

With 25 percent of the seats in Parliament reserved for the military, it is more and more clear that almost all the seats will be controlled by the military and its cronies. Even if some lucky candidates get elected, they will have no authority to promote change. The Parliament has no power to form the government, no authority to legislate military affairs, and no right to reject the president’s appointees and budget.

One might ask what is the solution, if it is not the election. It is dialogue, which we have been calling for for many years. Meaningful political dialogue between the military, the National League for Democracy led by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, and ethnic representatives is the only way to solve problems in Burma peacefully.

The military has no desire to talk. But if the international community seriously exercises strong and effective pressure on the regime, the combination of pressure from outside and peaceful resistance inside the country will force the regime to come to the dialogue table.

I wish that our friends in Europe would abandon their dream of expecting something impossible from the election, and start taking serious action against the regime with the aim of starting a dialogue. They should begin by creating a U.N. commission of inquiry to investigate human rights violations in Burma.

Win Tin is a founder of Burma’s National League for Democracy party and a member of its central executive committee. He was a political prisoner from 1989 to 2008.

Win Tin is a founder of Burma’s National League for Democracy party and a member of its central executive committee. He was a political prisoner from 1989 to 2008.

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Western election cheerleaders or Watering the poison ivy

The generals’ election October 2010

By: Maung Zarni

In the run-up to Burma’s fraught polls, some of the junta’s leading cheerleaders are Western governments who are bending over backwards to justify their stance.

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Vote with your feet: A protester steps on a photograph of General Than Shwe, during and anti-election demonstration in London, 17 September (Burma Democratic Concern)

Burma’s military regime has learned to speak election double-speak, framing the upcoming ‘selection by the generals’ as ‘democratic elections’. But there are few takers among the Burmese people, other than vocal election cheerleaders and regime apologists. And it is the country’s aging despot, ‘Senior’ General Than Shwe, who is said to be directly managing the military’s attempted transition from direct rule to indirect rule with a civilian mask. The general is holding the cards close to his chest, at times leaving his subordinates and deputies in the dark while he markets his moves as the final step in the Roadmap to Democracy.

The neighbours, meanwhile, from ASEAN as well as China and India, cannot wait for the end of the ‘election’ episode – currently slated to take place on 7 November – so that they can deflect international criticism over their cosy ties with the only true military dictatorship in South or Southeast Asia. For their part, most global Burma experts (at the Brookings Institution, for instance, and the International Crisis Group) have been harping on the need to seize the opportunity of the purported changing of the guard in Naypyidaw to nudge the next generation of military officers towards economic reforms – which, they argue, will bring about political liberalisation. However, the living evidence of post-Maoist China stands in the way of validating such a half-baked ‘development-democracy’ theory.

Still, the opposition within Burma is also not completely united. Much to the dismay of Aung San Suu Kyi of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and other leading dissidents, some European Union governments (for instance, Germany) are supporting a small group of NLD renegades with no public following, who are treating the election as ‘the only game in town’, to borrow the pragmatic words of David Lipman, EU ambassador in Bangkok. Clearly Suu Kyi and her several thousand colleagues behind bars, as well as thousands more in exile, do not share such pragmatic resignation.

Watering the poison ivy

If the unfettered market is the raison d’être of the post-USSR world, then what is referred to as ‘civil society’ has become a key political instrument, policy objective and funding programme. This highly contested academic construct – manufactured in 18th-century feudal Germany – suddenly found itself in vogue, especially among policymakers, journalists and clever interns in Western capitals. In place of genuine political solidarity with the several thousand Burmese dissidents behind bars and the public at large, these Western election cheerleaders have offered both podiums and per diems for bogus ‘civil society’ activists who are not at all representative of the public sentiment.

Germany’s Friedrick-Ebert Stiftung (FES) is one such EU-based entity. Despite its declared aim of supporting ‘global justice’ (and it being named after that country’s first democratically elected president), this influential political foundation keeps tight relations with the regime’s external propaganda wing, such as the Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies, and supports controversial local NGOs such as Myanmar Egress. NLD leader U Tin Oo has aptly described this relationship as ‘a broker between the regime’s cronies and the National Democratic Force’, made up of pro-election NLD renegades. Recently, FES organised a public forum in Berlin with two of Burma’s most vociferous pro-election voices, Khin Zaw Win, a former political prisoner cum NGO worker, and Nay Win Maung, the head of Myanmar Egress, purportedly to promote Burmese civil society’s diverse voices. The duo was joined by Andreas List, the EU official in charge of the Burma portfolio, who holds strong pro-election views. For many observers, this seemed to run counter to the FES mission of promoting pluralistic voices from and on Burma.

This prompted 90-year-old U Tin Oo, the NLD cofounder and senior colleague of Suu Kyi, to officially write to List, registering his party’s ‘grave’ concerns about EU officials amplifying these unrepresentative voices. In fact, the manufacturing of elitist ‘civil society voices’ has been in the work for some years. Several European entities – such as the European Commission, Britain’s Department of International Development (DFID) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Netherlands’s Oxfam Novib, and Action Aid, to name just a few – have played paymasters in the creation and promotion of a small but influential pool of ‘civil-society actors’. In so doing, they have primed their native proxies for the marketisation of the Burmese economy and the NGO-isation of local politics, at the expense of the opposition in particular and the public in general.

In many a closed-door Burma policy discussions that this writer has attended in London, Bangkok, Washington and Brussels over the past several years, self-styled ‘nation-builders’ and their Western ‘donors’ have promoted a deeply troublesome perspective. Incredibly, they say that it is the 2000 Burmese dissidents in captivity, including Suu Kyi, and their supporters in exile, who constitute the real obstacle in Burma’s economic development. This is their message to sympathetic audiences, including representatives from Western governments, UN officials and think tanks, as well as representatives of the multilateral financial institutions. In some instances, deviating sharply from the firm pro-democracy stance of their own governments’ official policies, Burma-based diplomats have privately trashed jailed dissidents and their ‘incapacity to bring pragmatic and practical changes’, even while their governments at home are loudly condemning Burma’s regime for its alleged crimes against humanity.

In general, the Burmese people are dismayed by the outsiders’ embrace of such false logic as the idea that a flawed election is better than no election. In so doing, this embrace is taking in local elites – such as Khin Zaw Win and Nay Win Maung – who have learned to speak the language of ‘civil society’, while viewing themselves as a cut above the rest of Burma. U Aye Thar Aung, the prominent elderly Arakanese political leader, has characterised the current strain of misguided external support for the pro-election NGO elite as ‘watering the poison ivy’. Nonetheless, today a mantra of ‘get ready to exploit the post-election landscape’ fills much of the faddish policy discourse from Washington and Bangkok to Brussels and Berlin – a significant shift from the earlier spin, from the same quarters, that the election itself was the train for the opposition to hijack.

However, the greatest paradox in advancing civil society as the main game-changer in Burma is the fact that it makes no place for the proverbial masses. This is so, even while the Burmese public itself has refused to buy into the paternalistic view that economic prosperity, political freedoms and ethnic equality can be delivered by ‘Made in EU’ civil society.

Going ‘as planned’

The bulk of the Burmese opposition is not caving in to the regime’s two-decade-long campaign of cooptation and annihilation; nor does the Burmese public expect much from the post-election ‘structural changes’. Despite international media speculation playing up the unwarranted optimism of real structural changes in post-election Burma, the majority of the population has adopted ‘indifference’ to the upcoming polls, something even Khin Maung Swe of the pro-election NDF, has publicly acknowledged. This popular indifference might be an act of political reciprocity on the part of the public, which knows that the regime has been pursuing a policy of complete neglect towards public welfare. This is the case not just in normal times (for instance, the complete absence of state-provided social safety nets and social services) but also in the face of national emergency, as in the immediate aftermath of the May 2008 Cyclone Nargis.

Why should the Burmese electorate care about the upcoming election, after the regime has permitted none of the publicly respected dissidents to participate? Every dissident whom the generals perceive as a threat to their widely unpopular rule of 22 years remains locked up in the country or has been pushed into exile. Thus, that gives a count of 2000-plus potential candidates who are not part of the election – individuals with valuable professional background, years of experience building political organisations, and genuine popular support and following, and from diverse multiethnic and religious backgrounds.

Just as the regime is telling the neighbours and the world at large that election preparations are going ahead as planned, its Union Election Commission has been gagging candidates on important policy issues, and dissolved (ie, banned) ten established political parties, including the NLD. In addition, since the regime has realised that candidates from its Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) cannot win in ethnic minority communities such as Kachin, Karenni, Karen, Mon and Shan states, it has cancelled holding elections in some 200 villages, declaring that in these constituencies ‘free and fair election could not be held’ due to security concerns. This latest move is a win-win situation for the generals, since it has now paved the way for declaring these ‘black areas’, a vast conflict zone where local populations will be subject to ‘shoot-to-kill’ policies. At the same time, the Election Commission has refused to register 14 ethnic Kachin politicians, as they fear these could enjoy strong local support as well as the backing of the Kachin Independence Army, a ceasefire group that has refused to capitulate to the regime’s pressure to place its troops under the latter’s central command.

The regime also set the registration fee per candidate at USD 500, an incredibly high sum in a country where annual per capita income is roughly USD 200, and the result has been predictable. Even the NDF (the largest new pro-democracy party, made up of NLD renegades) and the Democracy Party (Myanmar), spearheaded by the three well-known daughters of former prime ministers from the long-bygone civilian parliamentary era, can only field a combined total of some 200 candidates, out of around 1000 available slots. By contrast, the regime’s USDP and the pro-regime National Unity Party (NUP), made up of ex-military personnel who served under the country’s first dictator, General Ne Win, are both contesting in practically all constituencies.

During the previous election, held in 1990, the Burmese generals had imposed equally draconian election laws, and dozens of parties, including the NLD, took part. Originally convinced that the popular opposition was too fractured to beat the pro-regime military-filled NUP, the generals were stunned by the NLD’s landslide victory, winning 82 percent of all parliamentary seats and 60 percent of the popular vote. This has since been put down to tactical voting by the voters, many of whom registered with different parties but ultimately voted overwhelmingly for the NLD.

This time, the generals are taking no such chances. The regime might even disqualify the NLD renegade party, the NDF, which is currently fielding the third-largest number of candidates, at 161. It is an open secret that the NDF has received political support and, allegedly, funding from foreign sources such as EU governments and foundations through proxy NGOs such as Egress – both of which are barred under the Burmese Constitution of 2008.

More civilianising

Any student of democratic transitions knows that elections are a necessary ingredient in all emerging democratic or semi-democratic political systems. But in and of itself, an election amounts to nothing, especially when the larger context remains oppressive. In light of Burma’s exceedingly repressive political context, even the proponents of the logic that flawed elections are better than no election would be hard-pressed to find a silver lining in the gathering dark clouds of the upcoming polls.

Today, one central criticism against the principled opposition to the polls is that Burma’s ‘people power’ revolts have been resounding failures, with every wave of mass opposition since 1962 having been met only with bullets and bayonets. But what the proponents of this view conveniently overlook is the fact that successful mass revolts, from Marcos’s Philippines to Suharto’s Indonesia, were aided by external events. In the Philippines, for instance, this was the withdrawal of US support for Marcos; in Indonesia, the collapse of Asian financial markets decisively loosened Suharto’s grip. In fact, no colonial rule or fascist occupation in history has ended without serious external impetus, while international solidarity has also been a crucial factor in successful revolutions. However, the Burmese people have been left to themselves in fighting the regime, with the international community paying lip service – even though a person of the stature of Suu Kyi is at the centre of the people’s existential fight against the generals. On the other hand, blaming the victims – and dissidents alike – as is currently happening in the Burma context, without being prepared to offer concrete support, adds insult to injury.

To the individuals and institutions, local and global, who are currently advocating the ‘generals’ election’, the uncertainties inherent in the post-election structures and institutions are preferable to the certainty of the continued political stalemate between the opposition and the ruling military. The Burmese have been through this before. On the 12th anniversary of the Revolutionary Council rule of Gen Ne Win, in 1974, the Burmese electorates were offered a new constitution, which the ruling generals at the time said was approved by 91 percent of all eligible voters; thereafter, elections were held within a one-party socialist system. Overnight, the public was presented with a nominal division of power, a people’s parliament, a council of state, a council of inspectors, a people’s court and a broad-based mass party, all headed by ‘civilianised’ generals. Fast-forward to 1988, and these structures and institutions collapsed like a house of cards in the midst of a series of countrywide popular revolts.

Historical amnesia might be a trademark for some peoples, but the Burmese are a historically conscious lot. They know the changes now on offer are cosmetic, particularly the generations of Burmese who survived the first period of military rule with a civilian mask. They even have a saying, ‘We have been dead once, and we know the cost of a coffin,’ meaning, We don’t intend to commit our own political suicide and play with death. Europe, which lived through Fascist and Nazi occupations only 60 years ago, has already largely forgotten the most vital lesson from its own history: that no tyrannical power concedes without a fight.

What the Burmese public – and 2000 jailed dissidents – need from Western governments and other institutions today is for the latter to stop acting as if foreign offices in Europe, policy wonks in Washington or the global humanitarian industry know what is best for the people of Burma. They need to stop parroting the generals’ election double-speak. And if they are unprepared to offer real solidarity for Burma’s decades-long struggle against home-grown tyrants, in uniform or in mufti, the least they can do is follow a new mantra: Do no harm to the Burmese opposition in particular, and the public in general.

The writer is founder of the Free Burma Coalition and a visiting research fellow at Oxford University.

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ျပန္ေခါက္သိမ္းေပးပါရန္...

ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားေကာင္း တစ္ေယာက္ျဖစ္ရန္ ပညတ္ေတာ္ (၁၀) ပါး

ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားေကာင္း တစ္ေယာက္ျဖစ္ရန္ ပညတ္ေတာ္ (၁၀) ပါး

(Ten Rules For Being a Good Politician)

၁။မိမိကိုယ္ကို ႏွိမ့္ခ်ပါ။

ေနရာယူတတ္တိုင္း အာဏာရသည္မဟုတ္။ တစ္ဦးခ်င္းအေနနဲ႕ သင့္မွာ မျဖစ္စေလာက္ အာဏာေလးပဲရွိတယ္ဆိုတာ နားလည္ထားပါ၊

အာဏာဆိုတာ စုေပါင္းလုပ္ရပ္ကေန ထြက္ေပၚလာျခင္းသာ ျဖစ္တယ္။

၂။အျခားသူမ်ားကိုေကာင္းမြန္စြာဆက္ဆံပါ။

ျပည္သူေတြႏွင့္ မကင္းမကြာေနပါ။ ေနာင္အခါသူတို႕ရဲ႕ ေထာက္ခံမူကို သင္လိုအပ္လာလိမ့္မယ္။

၃။မဟာဗ်ဴဟာေျမာက္စဥ္းစားပါ။

အာဏာ ဘယ္မွာရွိသလဲ။

အျခားသူေတြရဲ႕ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ကို ငါ ဘယ္လို ရႏိုင္မလဲ။

ငါ့ကို ဘယ္သူေတြကေထာက္ခံမလဲ။

လူတိုင္းလူတိုင္းအေနနဲ႕ တစ္ခုခုေတာ့ အက်ိဳးအျမတ္ရရွီသြားတဲ့အေနအထားကိုဖန္တီးပါ။

၄။အထူးျပဳပါ။

သင္စိတ္၀င္စားတဲ့ဘာသာရပ္ေခါင္းစဥ္ တစ္ခုကို ေရြးခ်ယ္ပါ။အဲ့ဒီ ဘာသာရပ္ကို ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ သုေတသနျပဳပါ။

သင္ေလ့လာထားတဲ့ ဘာသာရပ္နဲ႕ပတ္သက္လို႕ ပါတီမန္ထဲမွာ သင္ဟာ က်ြမ္းက်င္သူတစ္ေယာက္ျဖစ္ေနပါေစ။

ေနာက္ဆံုးေတာ့အျခားသူမ်ားက အမ်ားအေရွ႕မွာျဖစ္ျဖစ္၊ တစ္ဦးခ်င္းပဲ ျဖစ္ျဖစ္ သင့္အျမင္ကို ေမးျမန္းလာရတဲ့အထိ ျဖစ္လာမယ္။ ဒါဟာသင့္အေနနဲ႔ အေတာ္ၾကီးမားတဲ့ ေနရာရမူနဲ႕ ၾသဇာလႊမ္းမိုးမူျဖစ္တယ္။

၅။ရွင္းလင္းသဲကြဲျပီး လက္ေတြ႕ျဖစ္ႏိုင္ေျခရွိတဲ့ ပန္းတိုင္မ်ား ရွိပါေစ။

သင္ေရြးေကာက္တင္ေျမွာက္ခံရခ်ိန္ကစလို႕ သင္ဘာေတြ စြမ္းေဆာင္လိုသလဲဆိုတာ ကိုသိပါ။

ကမၻာၾကီးကိုေျပာင္းလဲပစ္ဖို႕ေတာ့ မၾကိဳးစားပါနဲ႕။

အတိုင္းအဆရွိတဲ့ ရည္မွန္းခ်က္မ်ားကို ေရြးခ်ယ္ပါ။ (သင့္စိတ္ဓာတ္နဲ႕ကိုက္ညီတာျဖစ္ပါေစ။)

၆။ကိစၥရပ္မ်ားကို နားလည္ပါေစ။

သူေတသနျပဳပါ။

ေဒသႏၱရျပႆနာကေန ႏိုင္ငံတကာျပႆနာအထိ ဘယ္ကိစၥရပ္ကို ေဆြးေႏြးသည္ျဖစ္ေစ။ သင့္မွာ ေနာက္ဆံုး သတင္းအခ်က္အလက္ ရွိေနေအာင္ေလ့လာထားပါ။

၇။သူတစ္ပါးေျပာတာေတြကို နားေထာင္ပါ။

အရာရာကို သင္သိျပီးသားလို႕မထင္ပါနဲ႕။

အျခားသူမ်ားရဲ႕ အေတြးအၾကံဳဟာ သင့္အေတြ႔အၾကံဳနဲ႔ မတူကြဲျပားႏိုင္တယ္။သူမ်ားရဲ႕ အေတြ႕အၾကံဳဳက သင့္အျမင္ကို ျပန္လည္ သံုးသပ္ဖုိ႕အေထာက္အကူျဖစ္ႏိုင္တယ္။

၈။ကရုဏာနဲ႔ ေလးစားသမႈနဲ႕ ဘယ္လိုျငင္းဆန္ရမလဲ ေလ့လာထားပါ။

"ဟင့္အင္း" (No) လို႕ ေျပာရတာ၊ ျငင္းဆန္ရတာ မလြယ္ပါဘူး။ သင္ျငင္းဆန္လိုက္သူရဲ႕ အကူအညီကို တခ်ိန္ခ်ိန္မွာ သင္ လိုေကာင္း လိုလာႏိုင္တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္သင္ျငင္းဆန္တဲ့အခါ တစ္ဖက္သားကို ေစာ္ကားလိုက္သလို မျဖစ္ပါေစနဲ႔။

၉။သင့္ေနရာကို နားလည္ပါေစ။

ပါလီမန္ရဲ႕ လုပ္ထံုးလုပ္နည္း စည္းမ်ဥ္းေတြနဲ႔ အစဥ္အလာေတြကို ပို၍ နားလည္ေလ၊ အဲ့ဒါေတြကို အသံုးခ်ျပီး သင့္ရည္မွွွန္းခ်က္မ်ားကို ပိုရ စြမ္းေဆာင္ႏိုင္စြမ္းရွိေလ။

၁၀။ေလးစားေလာက္သူျဖစ္ပါေစ။

အျခားသူမ်ားရဲ႕အျမင္မ်ားနဲ႕ အေတြ႕အၾကံဳမ်ားကို သင္က ေလးစားသမူရွိေၾကာင္း ျပပါ။သင္ဟာ ယံုၾကည္ေလာက္သူျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိသာထင္ရွားပါေစ။

အက်င့္ပ်က္အျပဳအမူမ်ားကို သိေအာင္ေလ့လာထားပါ။

ယခင္ ၾသစေၾတးယ် ပါလီမန္ အထက္လႊတ္ေတာ္ အမတ္ Vicki Bourne `ေရးသားေသာ “Ten Rules For Being a Good Politician” ကို တင္ျပျခင္းျဖစ္ပါသည္။

စီစဥ္သူ ဘေလာ့ခ္ဂါ ဒီမိုေဝယံ၊ အလင္းဆက္၊ ခမိခဆဲ

၂၄. စက္တင္ဘာလ. ၂၀၁၀

Ten Rules For Being a Good Politician

Vicki Bourne

Former Senator

Australian Parliament

1. Be humble

+ There is no positional power.

+ Be aware of how little power you have individually.

+ Power is only a product of collective action.

2. Be nice to others

* Keep people on side — you might need their support later.

3. Think strategically

+ Where is the power?

+ How can I get others to agree?

+ Who will back me?

+ Create a situation where everyone gains something.

4. Specialise

+ Pick a topic that interests you and research it thoroughly.

+ Become one of the experts in the Parliament on your topic.

+ Eventually, others will seek your point of view, publicly and privately, and this will give you considerable standing and influence.

5. Have clear, achievable goals

+ Know what you want to achieve from the time you are elected.

+ Do not try to change the world.

+ Pick objectives that are measurable (this is good for your own morale).

6. Understand the issues

* Research. If you are discussing any issue – local to international – make sure you have all the most up-to-date information.

7. Listen to others

+ Do not think you understand it all. Others’ experience will probably be different to yours, and they may help you re-think your view.

+ Anyway, in a democracy their view also counts.

8. Learn how to say “no”

kindly and with respect

* Sometimes this is not easy! But you might need that person’s support later so avoid offending.

9. Understand your Institution

* The more you understand the rules of procedure and the traditions of the parliament, the more you will be able to use these to achieve your goals.

10. Earn respect

+ Show you respect the views and experience of others

+ Demonstrate that you can be trusted

+ Learn to recognise corrupt behaviours

Vicki Worrall Bourne (born 22 October 1954) is a former Australian Democrats Senator for New South Wales from 1990 to 2002.

Bourne was born in Sydney; she attended the selective High School, Fort Street, and then UNSW where she obtained a BSc and MSc. She was employed as a research officer for Democrats Senator Colin Mason in 1978, in 1980 she joined the party, following Mason's resignation she was a research officer for Senator Paul McLean. She was elected to the Senate at the 1990 election, her term began on July 1, 1990. She was elected for a second them in 1996, and was defeated by Australian Greens candidate Kerry Nettle at the general election in 2001, her term ending on June 30 2002.

Shared by Blogger Demowaiyen, Alinsek , Kamikaze

24. September. 2010

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ျပန္ေခါက္သိမ္းေပးပါရန္...

သခင္ေအာင္ဆန္း က "လူညံ့စိတ္ေဖ်ာက္ျပီး၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးကို လိုက္စားလိုက္စမ္းပါ" တဲ့

သခင္ေအာင္ဆန္း အေတြး၊ သခင္ေအာင္ဆန္း အေရး

လူေတြကို ျပဳျပင္လို႔ရ၏။ ျပဳျပင္လို၏။ တိုးတက္လို၏။ ဤအခ်က္မွာ ထင္ရွားေနေပၿပီ။ စင္စစ္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးမွာ ထိုျပဳျပင္တိုးတက္လိုသည့္ ပင္မတရားၾကီး တစ္ရပ္ပင္ျဖစ္၏။ ထိုတရားကား..ေလာကီ နိဗၺာန္္ ကို ေနာက္ဆံုး ရည္မွန္းေပ၏။

ကမၻာေလာကဓါတ္ကို သူ႕သဘာဝ သူ႔မူ သူ႔ကိန္းအေလွ်ာက္ သိလွ်င္မူ မည္သူမွ် အာဏာရွင္ မင္းေလာင္းတို႔ကို ေမွ်ာ္ေနမည္မဟုတ္။ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေကာင္းကိုလည္း ေစာင့္စားေနမည္ မဟုတ္။ မိမိဝတၱရား အင္အားကိုသိလွ်င္ သိသည့္အေလွ်ာက္ လူတိုင္း ၾကိဳးစားၾကမည္။ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသည္ လူတိုင္းႏွင့္ဆိုင္သည္။ လူတိုင္းလုပ္မွ ျဖစ္မည္။ မင္းေလာင္းေမွ်ာ္ေနစရာ မဟုတ္၊ ဘယ္ေနရာကမွ မင္းေလာင္းေပၚလာမည္မဟုတ္။

စၾကၤာမင္း ဆိုေသာ္လည္းမရွိ၊ လာမည္မဟုတ္။ ေပၚလွ်င္လည္း သူလိုငါလိုထဲမွ ရာဇဝင္ကိန္းခမ္းအေလွ်ာက္ (ဝါ) အေရးေပၚသည့္အခါ၊ အခါအေလွ်ာက္ ေဆာင္ရြတ္ရန္ စြြမ္းရည္သတၱိရွိသူသည္၊ မုခ်ဆတ္ဆတ္ တကယ့္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ျဖစ္မည္။ ထိုသူသည္ သင္လည္းျဖစ္ႏိုင္၏။ ငါလည္းျဖစ္ႏိုင္၏။ ထိုေၾကာင့္ သင့္စိတ္ဝယ္ ကိန္းေအာင္းေနေသာ လူညံ့စိတ္ေဖ်ာက္ျပီး၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးကို လိုက္စားလိုက္စမ္းပါ။ “ေယာကၤ်ားတံခြန္ လူရည္ခၽြန္က၊ ေကာင္းကင္တမြတ္ ၾကယ္ကိုဆြတ္လည္း၊ မလြတ္စတမ္း ရျမဲလမ္း” ဒါဟာဒါမ်ိဳး ဆိုတာဘဲ။

သခင္ေအာင္ဆန္း ၏ “ႏီုင္ငံေရး အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳး” ေဆာင္းပါးမွ….

General Aung San’s political thoughts

Men can and wish to reform. This desire for progress is obvious. Actually politics is this drive for reform and progress. Its ultimate objective is to create a heaven on earth.

If aware of the nature, principles and probabilities of this scientific world, no one will expect the arrival of dictatorial pretenders to the throne nor of the charismatic leaders. As much as one is conscious of one’s own duty and capability, everyone will strive his utmost. Politics concerns everybody and needs everyone’s participation. There is no need to awaits a pretender to the throne since none will emerge from anywhere. By the same token, no chakravat will emerge because there is none. If a so-called chakravat emerges, he will be someone from among the crowd who rises to the historical occasion and leads the people with ability and courage. He could be you or me. So, get rid of your inferiority complex and go into politics. “Man is capable of reaching to the stars” , so the saying goes.

Bogyoke Aung San (1915-1947)

(from his article: Many Kind of Politics)

translated by Retired ambassador Thet Tun

ဘေလာ့ခ္ဂါ ဒီမိုေဝယံ၊ အလင္းဆက္၊ ခမိခဆဲ တို႔မွ ဖန္တီးတင္ျပသည္။

ဒီဇိုင္းဆြဲေပးသူ ညီေလး ေကာင္းေကာင္း ကိုလည္းေက်းဖူးတင္ပါတယ္။

၂၃. စက္တင္ဘာလ. ၂၀၁၀

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“စၾကာဝဠာၾကီးကို ဘုရားသခင္ ဖန္တီးခဲ့ျခင္းမဟုတ္”ဟု ရူပေဗဒ ပညာရွင္ၾကီး ေျပာဆို

“စၾကာဝဠာၾကီးကို ဘုရားသခင္ ဖန္တီးခဲ့ျခင္းမဟုတ္”ဟု ရူပေဗဒ ပညာရွင္ၾကီး ေျပာဆို

စၾကာဝဠာၾကီး ကို ဘုရားသခင္ ဖန္တီးခဲ့ျခင္း မဟုတ္ဟု ကမၻာေက်ာ္ ရူပေဗဒ ပညာရွင္ၾကီး စတီ္ဗင္ ေဟာ့ကင္း Stephen Hawking က ေျပာယခုလတြင္ ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သည္။

စက္တင္ဘာလ ၂ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ သူ ႏွင့္ အေမရိကန္ ရူပေဗဒ ပညာရွင္ လီယိုနက္ မလိုဒီေနာ (Leonard Mlodinow) ပူးေပါင္းျပဳစုေရးသားေသာ ‘ခမ္းနားေသာ ဒီဇိုင္း’ (Grand Design) စာအုပ္ မိတ္ဆက္ပြဲတြင္ ေဟာကင္းက ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။

“ဆြဲငင္အား (gravity) ကဲ့သို႔ နိယာမ ရွိေနျခင္းေၾကာင့္ စၾကာဝဠာၾကီး အေနႏွင့္ ဘာမွမလိုဘဲ သူဘာသာသူ တည္ရွိေနႏိုင္သည္။ အလိုအေလ်ာက္ ဖန္တီးျခင္း (Spontaneous creation) ဆိုသည္မွာ စၾကာဝဠာၾကီး ဘာေၾကာင့္ တညိရွိေနသလဲ၊ လူသားေတြ ဘာေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္တည္ေနသလဲ ေမခြန္းေတြအတြက္ ဘာမွမရွိတာထက္စာရင္ တခုတခုရွိတယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ဆင္ျခင္မႈ တစ္ခုသာျဖစ္ပါသည္” ဟု ေဟာ့ကင္း ကဆိုသည္။

“ဘုရားသခင္အား စၾကာဝဠာၾကီးကို စတင္ေပးရန္ အသနားခံ ေတာင္းဆိုစရာလည္း လိုမည္မဟုတ္ပါ” ဟု သူကေျပာခဲ့သည္။

အသက္ ၆၈ ႏွစ္ရွိျပီျဖစ္ေသာ အဂၤလိပ္လူမ်ိဳး ရူပေဗဒ ပညာရွင္ၾကီး စတင္ဗင္ေဟာကင္း သည္ ၁၉၈၈ ခုႏွစ္က ထုတ္ေဝခဲ့ေသာ သူ၏ “အခိ်န္၏ သမိုင္း” (A Brief History of Time) စာအုပ္ျဖင့္ ကမၻာ့ပညာရွင္မ်ားၾကား ေလးစား အသိအမွတ္ျပဳ ခံခဲ့ရသူျဖစ္သည္။

သူသည္ black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity စေသာ ရူပေဗဒဆိုင္ရာ သီအိုရီ သေဘာတရားမ်ားအေပၚ ေလ့လာစူးစမ္းတင္ျပရဲေသာ လုပ္ရပ္မ်ားေၾကာင့္လည္း ထင္ရွား ေက်ာ္ၾကားသည္။

ဘေလာ့ခ္ဂါ မိုးဆက္ ကဆီေလွ်ာ္ေအာင္ ဘာသာျပန္တင္ျပေပးပါသည္။

၂၂. စက္တင္ဘာလ. ၂၀၁၀

God did not create the universe, says Hawking

Reuters, Sept 2, 2010

LONDON, UK -- God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

In The Grand Design, co-authored with US physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts today.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” Hawking writes.

“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book A Brief History of Time, an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.

Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics — Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.

His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.

He wrote in A Brief History ... “If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.”

In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God.

“That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions — the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings,” he writes.

Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesiser, has a neuro muscular dystrophy that has progressed over the years and left him almost completely paralysed.

He began suffering the disease in his early 20s but went on to establish himself as one of the world’s leading scientific authorities, and has also made guest appearances in “Star Trek” and the cartoons “Futurama” and “The Simpsons”.

Last year he announced he was stepping down as Cambridge University’s Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position once held by Newton and one he had held since 1979.

The Grand Design is due to go on sale next week.

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အေမစု ရဲ႕ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ကဗ်ာတစ္ပုဒ္

Free bird towards a free Burma


My home...

where I was born and raised

used to be warm and lovely

now filled with darkness and horror.



My family...

whom I had grown with

used to be cheerful and lively

now living with fear and terror.

My friends...

whom I shared my life with

used to be pure and merry

now living with wounded heart.



A free bird...

which is just freed

used to be caged

now flying with an olive branch

for the place it loves.

A free bird towards a Free Burma.



Aung San Suu Kyi




လြတ္လပ္တဲ့ ဗမာျပည္ ဆီသု႔ိ လြတ္လပ္ျခင္း ငွက္ငယ္တစ္ေကာင္

ငါရဲ႕ အိမ္ကေလးရယ္…
အဲဒီမွာ ငါေမြးဖြားေနထိုင္ ခဲ့ရေပါ့။
ေႏြးေထြးျပီး လွပသာယာဖြယ္ ေကာင္းခဲ့ပါရဲ႕။
ခုေတာ့လည္းေလ
ေမွာင္မိုက္ျပီး ထိတ္လန္႔ဖြယ္ အျပည့္နဲ႔ေပါ့။

ငါရဲ႕ မိသားစုေလးရယ္…
အဲဒီမွာ ငါ ၾကီးျပင္း ခဲ့ရေပါ့။
လန္းဆန္း ၾကည္ႏူးဖြယ္ ေကာင္းခဲ့ပါရဲ႕။
ခုေတာ့လည္းေလ
အေၾကာက္တရားေတြ အျပည့္နဲ႔ေပါ့။



ငါရဲ႕ သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြရယ္…
ငါ့ရဲ့ ဘဝကို မွ်ေဝခံစားေပးခဲ့ေပါ့။
ျဖဳစင္႐ိုးသား ေပ်ာ္ရႊင္ဖြြယ္ ေကာင္းခဲ့ပါရဲ႕။
ခုေတာ့လည္းေလ
စိတ္ဒဏ္ရာ ကိုယ္စီေတြနဲ႔ေပါ့။

လြတ္လပ္ျခင္း ငွက္ငယ္…
ခုေနခါေတာ့ လြတ္လပ္ခဲ့ျပီ။
သူလည္းေလ ေလွာင္အိမ္စံ ေနခဲ့ရေပါ့။
ခုေတာ့လည္းေလ
သူခ်စ္တဲ့ ေနရာေလးဆီ
သံလြင္ခက္ကေလးကို ကိုက္ခ်ီ ပ်ံသန္းရင္းေပါ့။

လြတ္လပ္တဲ့ ဗမာျပည္ဆီသို႔ လြတ္လပ္ျခင္း ငွက္ငယ္တစ္ေကာင္။ ။

ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္

ဘာသာျပန္သူ...ဘေလာ့ခ္ဂါ အလင္းဆက္ ( Blogger Alinsek)
၁၅.ဇြန္လ.၂၀၁၀


အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေန ့(စက္တင္ဘာလ-၂၁ရက္ေန႔) အမွတ္တရ အျဖစ္ လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္ ျငိမ္ခ်မ္းေရး ႏိုဗယ္ ဆုရွင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ အပါအဝင္ ျငိမ္ခ်မ္းေရးကို ျမတ္ႏိုးသူတိုင္း၊ ျငိမ္ခ်မ္းေရးအတြက္ ေပးဆပ္ တိုက္ပြဲ ဝင္ေနသူ အားလံုးကို ေလးစားဂုဏ္ျပဳေသာအားျဖင့္ ဘေလာ့ခ္ဂါ ဒီမိုေဝယံ၊ အလင္းဆက္ ႏွင့္ ခမိခဆဲ တို႔မွ ဖန္ တီးတင္ျပျခင္းျဖစ္ပါသည္။

ဆက္လက္ဖက္႐ွဳရန္...

ျပန္ေခါက္သိမ္းေပးပါရန္...

အေမစု ရဲ႔ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ကဗ်ာတပုဒ္

Peace as a goal is an ideal
which will not be contested by any government or nation,
not even the most belligerent.

Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi

Free bird towards a free Burma


My home...

where I was born and raised

used to be warm and lovely

now filled with darkness and horror.



My family...

whom I had grown with

used to be cheerful and lively

now living with fear and terror.



My friends...

whom I shared my life with

used to be pure and merry

now living with wounded heart.



A free bird...

which is just freed

used to be caged

now flying with an olive branch

for the place it loves.

A free bird towards a Free Burma.



Aung San Suu Kyi




လြတ္လပ္တဲ့ ဗမာျပည္ ဆီသု႔ိ လြတ္လပ္ျခင္း ငွက္ငယ္တစ္ေကာင္

ငါရဲ႕ အိမ္ကေလးရယ္…
အဲဒီမွာ ငါေမြးဖြားေနထိုင္ ခဲ့ရေပါ့။
ေႏြးေထြးျပီး လွပသာယာဖြယ္ ေကာင္းခဲ့ပါရဲ႕။
ခုေတာ့လည္းေလ
ေမွာင္မိုက္ျပီး ထိတ္လန္႔ဖြယ္ အျပည့္နဲ႔ေပါ့။

ငါရဲ႕ မိသားစုေလးရယ္…
အဲဒီမွာ ငါ ၾကီးျပင္း ခဲ့ရေပါ့။
လန္းဆန္း ၾကည္ႏူးဖြယ္ ေကာင္းခဲ့ပါရဲ႕။
ခုေတာ့လည္းေလ
အေၾကာက္တရားေတြ အျပည့္နဲ႔ေပါ့။

ငါရဲ႕ သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြရယ္…
ငါ့ရဲ့ ဘဝကို မွ်ေဝခံစားေပးခဲ့ေပါ့။
ျဖဳစင္႐ိုးသား ေပ်ာ္ရႊင္ဖြြယ္ ေကာင္းခဲ့ပါရဲ႕။
ခုေတာ့လည္းေလ
စိတ္ဒဏ္ရာ ကိုယ္စီေတြနဲ႔ေပါ့။

လြတ္လပ္ျခင္း ငွက္ငယ္…
ခုေနခါေတာ့ လြတ္လပ္ခဲ့ျပီ။
သူလည္းေလ ေလွာင္အိမ္စံ ေနခဲ့ရေပါ့။
ခုေတာ့လည္းေလ
သူခ်စ္တဲ့ ေနရာေလးဆီ
သံလြင္ခက္ကေလးကို ကိုက္ခ်ီ ပ်ံသန္းရင္းေပါ့။

လြတ္လပ္တဲ့ ဗမာျပည္ဆီသို႔ လြတ္လပ္ျခင္း ငွက္ငယ္တစ္ေကာင္။ ။

ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္

ဘာသာျပန္သူ...ဘေလာ့ခ္ဂါ အလင္းဆက္ ( Blogger Alinsek)
၁၅.ဇြန္လ.၂၀၁၀


အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေန ့(စက္တင္ဘာလ-၂၁ရက္ေန႔) တြင္ လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္ ျငိမ္ခ်မ္းေရး ႏိုဗယ္ဆုရွင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ အပါအဝင္ ျငိမ္ခ်မ္းေရးကို ျမတ္ႏိုးသူတိုင္း၊ ျငိမ္ခ်မ္းေရးအတြက္ ေပးဆပ္တိုက္ပြဲဝင္ေနသူ အားလံုးကို ေလးစားဂုဏ္ျပဳေသာအားျဖင့္ ဘေလာ့ခ္ဂါ ဒီမိုေဝယံ၊ အလင္းဆက္ ႏွင့္ ခမိခဆဲ တို႔မွ ဖန္တီးတင္ျပျခင္းျဖစ္ပါသည္။

ဆက္လက္ဖက္႐ွဳရန္...

ျပန္ေခါက္သိမ္းေပးပါရန္...

Junta’s Strategic Election

The Burmese military junta has declared ‘free and fair’ multi-party elections will be held on November 7. However, the military’s announcement has been met mostly with skepticism by those familiar with the regime’s appalling human rights records and history of brutally stifling all dissent. The elections are in accordance with the new Burmese constitution, which was approved in a May 2008 referendum widely regarded as rigged.

The international community has expressed concern that the first general election in Burma in 20 years may not run fairly or freely following the issuance of a new law that effectively bans democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from participating in the contest. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate described the new election laws as “repressive” and “unjust.”

UN Secretary General in September urged the Burmese authorities to ensure conditions conducive to a fully inclusive and participatory electoral process.

UN Secretary General said that a ministerial-level meeting of the Group of Friends of Myanmar is expected to be held in New York on Sept. 27 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

It is disheartening to see that the elections have been “rigged” from the start. Burma’s election laws are very strict, which has already forced the military regime’s main opponent, the National League for Democracy, to decide not to register for the elections.

Moreover, the United Nations, members of ASEAN, and numerous Western nations have insisted that the elections will not be credible without the participation of Suu Kyi.

In the last free election in 1990, the Burmese people overwhelmingly rejected military rule, awarding the National League for Democracy party more than 80 percent of the seats in parliament. Yet the military has refused to allow the NLD to form a government. In the 20 years since that election, Burmese democracy activists have faced imprisonment, intimidation, torture and death as they have peacefully voiced demands for justice, individual and ethnic rights, and a democratic form of government that is representative of all Burma’s people.

Ever since their embarrassing loss in 1990, the military regime has been afraid to hold elections in fear of again losing.

U Win Tin, a member of the Central Executive Committee and a co-founder of the National League for Democracy, wrote in an article that the showcase election planned by the military regime makes a mockery of the freedom sought by Burmese people and is simply intended to make military dictatorship permanent.

Key ministries including justice, defense and the interior will remain under the control of the military, and under the 2008 constitution, a quarter of the 440 parliament seats will be reserved for military officials. People holding military permissions are not permitted to contest the election. As such, twenty members of the junta, including Prime Minister Thein Sein, have retired from their posts to participate in the election. With the primary opponents out of the way, military leaders are resigning left and right from their posts to run in the 2010 elections as civilians. Furthermore, already one-fourth of the new Myanmar Parliament has been reserved for military officials, which means the officials who have resigned and are campaigning as civilians are most likely being positioned to take the remaining 75% of the seats in support of the military. The military plans to gain virtually all the seats of power.

A 224-member House of Nationalities will have 168 elected candidates and 56 nominated by the military chief, while the 440-member House of Representatives will have 330 elected civilians and 110 military representatives. In total, there will be 1,163 seats in the national and regional parliaments elected by the people. At the same time, the results of the 1990 elections were annulled as they did not comply with the new election laws.

All of this has led the new laws to being described as a “farce” by the Philippines and a “mockery” by the United States.

The United States and other Western governments have roundly criticized Burma’s election plans as undemocratic. They have pressed the junta to release all political prisoners, including Suu Kyi. Several countries impose economic and political sanctions on Burma over its human rights record.

But observers don’t expect any concessions from the junta before the election. In any event, Western influence in Burma is far weaker than that of neighboring countries like Thailand, China, and India, which have invested far more in Burma’s resource-based economy.

Some scholars said that the Burmese military junta has ensured that its hand-picked candidates will win in November by imposing restrictions on opponents, including expensive filing fees, tight deadlines and limits on who can be on the ballot.

Observers, especially pro-democracy supporters, have indignantly expressed outrage at the military regime’s so-called “fair elections”. Japan and other Asian countries have tried to convince the military dictators to hold elections that are actually democratic. The European Union, after considering Burma in the European Union Foreign Affairs Council meeting, has added another year to their political sanctions on Burma after the Asian country’s failure to respond to concerns about its elections being unfair.

Regardless of the mockery that the 2010 Myanmar elections may make of the democratic process, it would be an even bigger blow for the country if no genuine opposition participates. Under the new laws, the NLD will face dissolution as a legal entity if it continues with its current plan to boycott the election.

The Central executive council of NLD party has decided that it will not take part in the elections unless the following three demands are met: the release of political prisoners (approximately 2,100, of which around 400 are members of the NLD), observers be allowed to monitor the elections, and the Constitution of 2008 is revisited and examined. However, military junta has failed to respond to any of the demands of the NLD.

Despite the undemocratic clauses of the 2008 Constitution on which the 2010 election is based, it will essentially allow a pseudo-civilian government to be formed after the election. This will include the re-introduction of a parliamentary system in Burma, albeit with 25 per cent of the seats guaranteed for the military.

Despite the unfair practices and challenges any opposition party may face, the election also provides an opportunity for opposition groups to challenge the SPDC, by competing for seats against junta-backed proxy parties.

The Election Commission said 37 other parties would take part in the vote and that campaigning can take place from Sept. 24 through Oct. 30, but parties must refrain from making speeches that "tarnish the image" of the military.

The commission announced that five political parties were disbanded after they failed to renew registration as a political party for the Nov. 7 election.

Along with the NLD, four other parties were disbanded: the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, the Union Pa-O National Organization, the Shan State Kokang Democratic Party and the Wa National Development Party.

NLD spokesman Nyan Win in September 15 said the party will contend that the commission has no authority to dissolve an existing political party, only parties registered by the commission for the upcoming election.

The government established the Union Solidarity and Development Association, which is largely seen as their ‘grassroots’ political arm, in 1993. The organization claims to have around half the population as members. The National Unity Party, which contested the 1990 election as the main pro-government party and won 10 seats, has also registered to run.

Reuters estimates that six parties in total are allied to the government. The junta itself, according to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, will also be setting up two or three proxy parties to contest the election.

The Burmese military junta is notorious for its cunning and trickery. Therefore it is seen as difficult to believe they are capable of running an election with credibility, exclusivity, and fairness in 2010.

Top NLD leader Win Tin’s suggestion to Senior U.S. diplomat Mr. Kurt Campbell on 10 May 2010 was for the U.S. “not to recognize the results of the upcoming election, which will be held without the two important elements — credibility and exclusivity — that the international community has demanded.”

Ethnic issues and the Elections

The elections will be held the way the military junta wants them to be irrespective of the pressure exerted on it by neighbors or the international community. However, some expect a few concessions, such as the release of political prisoners and the acceptance of observers from neighboring countries, may be forthcoming just before the elections.

With or without the concessions, the biggest difficulty in creating an inclusive process may be in convincing the ethnic minorities that there is a reason for them to take part in the electoral process, even if they are not granted the concessions concerning autonomy that they desire.

40% the country’s population is composed of ethnic minorities and they control a sizable land mass all around the periphery of the nation. They joined the union at the time of Burmese independence from England. At the time, they were promised autonomy at a later date. However, autonomy has never been granted to any of the ethnic states.

The military junta has entered into ceasefire agreements with 17 ethnic rebel groups between 1989-94 with concessions to retain their arms and control of some parts of the territories occupied by the ethnic minorities.

In the 1990 elections most of the ethnic groups had joined hands and had fared well (especially the Shan National League for Democracy).

As a prelude to a smooth election the military junta has been pressuring the ethnic groups to transform their armies into border guards under the leadership of the Burmese Army, and to form their own political parties to contest the forthcoming elections.

Most of the ethnic armies (particularly the stronger ones such as the United Wa State Party (UWSP), the Kachin Independence organization (KIO) and the New Mon State Party (NMSP) have refused to be transformed into border guards and to contest the 2010 election. The few groups that may be taking part in the elections are perhaps hoping to take advantage of the political space made available, particularly at the regional level.

Many fear that once the 2010 elections are over and the new constitution is in force, the ethnic minorities will lose the few rights and privileges they have been enjoying until now.

The Constitution sets out a “self administered division” for the Wa and UWSA (the biggest of the ethnic minorities with 15,000–20,000 fighters) and plans to create 14 assemblies in areas that are home to the major ethnic groups, making the first offer of political space to the non-Burmese. However the regional assemblies will be under the supervision of the junta, which has the power to appoint one-fourth of the members to each assembly, as well as the chief minister of each region.

Asean leaders view the new Constitution and the election as positive steps by the junta. They may see the Constitution as a tool to recognize the political rights of the ethnic nationalities, since it grants the major ethnic states their own local parliaments as well as self-administrative areas for some ethnic minorities.

Those are positive changes, but why has the disarmament of the ethnic cease-fire groups, especially in the cases of the Kachin Independent Army (KIA) and United Wa State Army (UWSA), remained such a stumbling block? What are the difficulties behind this plan?

After an unsuccessful series of negotiations and postponements of the deadline for transforming into a Border Guard Force (BGF) last year, the KIA, with just 4,000 troops, is still in talks with the junta. The latest KIA proposal is to totally give up its arms if the junta honors the principles of the Panglong Agreement.

From a structural viewpoint, Burma’s new Constitution does appear to embrace a decentralized system with legislative power granted to state and regional Hluttaws [Parliaments] as well as the Leading [legal] Bodies within Self-Administered Areas.

Section 56 of the Constitution grants the UWSA-controlled areas in Shan State the status of a Self-Administered Division in a geographical area including six townships. In effect, it is equal to the other five Self-Administered Zones, which include the Naga, Danu, Pa-O, Pa Laung and Kokang.

However, the degree of freedom granted to the lowest legislative bodies in both administrative areas is so controlled that they will not have the autonomy necessary to make a single law governing their area if it is believed to be against the laws enacted by the Shan State Hluttaw, which also must be consistent with the laws of the national Hluttaw [Parliament], according to Section 198 of the Constitution.

In the national Hluttaw, the junta is assured of at least 25 percent of the seats (by the Constitution), in effect granting it a veto power to reject any legislation that the generals' oppose.

As a consequence, the border guard force proposal and the limited legislative powers granted to major ethnic groups in the Constitution are both major obstacles to national reconciliation. The major ethnic cease-fire groups will not accept the junta’s BGF plan and so far are reluctant to form political parties to contest the election, in effect granting it credibility.

After previously rejecting the registration application of the Kachin State Progressive Party (KSPP), Burma's Election Commission (EC) has in September 16 rejected the applications of 14 leading KSPP members, including its founder Tu Ja, who alternatively applied to run as individuals.

With such provisions the ethnic groups will lose their right to choose their chiefs and their self-determination rights, and hence their opportunity to voice their dissent. Some analysts have predicted that the civil war of six decades now in its ebb may erupt in full swing if the military junta is not able to settle the ethnic minority issues before the election.

It is incumbent on the ethnic minorities to come together and pose a united front if even some semblance of autonomy is to be achieved in their areas.

Refugees and Election

There is no doubt that the constitution is meant to perpetuate Military Despotism because the military is to be entrenched in every institution of the state. On the other hand, this constitution is also meant to establish an “Authoritarian Centralist” government. There is much concern that it will deny all democratic and human rights, as well as all rights of ethnic nationalities.

The generals, no doubt, now believe that there is no reason to hand power over to other groups that would benefit from what they have created: billions of dollars worth of natural gas revenue; a 20-year investment in the country’s infrastructure development, including mega hydro-power projects and dams; and expanding foreign trade, mainly with neighboring countries.

However, the military, for 20 years, has faced the fact that it is considered illegitimate both domestically and internationally. Also, despite being effectively marginalized, the armed ethnic groups have generally given little ground to the junta's demands. The generals have failed to solve the half-century old armed ethnic conflicts, the extreme poverty of the majority population, the threats of illegal drugs and the threat of endemic diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

The Burmese military junta expressed on 12 May 2010 that Burma has no need for foreign observers to monitor its first elections in two decades, despite international concerns that the polls will lack legitimacy.

There have been concerns from aid agencies that the upcoming election could see a growing number of refugees fleeing to Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh and China, due to alleged government repression, poverty and low-level ethnic conflict. Ceasefires between the military government and ethnic groups were also deteriorating.

Hundreds of thousands of Burmese lived in neighboring countries in refugee-like circumstances. Many may have fled Burma because they feared persecution.

At the end of June 2010, about 88,900 refugees and asylum-seekers were registered with the UNHCR in Malaysia, according to the UNHCR website.

Of those, 82,200 were refugees from Burma, comprising 38,700 Chin, 10,000 Rohingya, 7,000 Burmese Muslims, 3,800 Mon, 3,600 Kachin and other ethnic minorities from Burma.

2009 Global Trends: Refugees, Asylum-seekers, Returnees, Internally Displaced and Stateless Persons shows that the largest number of refugees who were resettlement with UNHCR assistance departed from Nepal (17,500), Thailand (16,800), Malaysia (7,500).

It shows that Malaysia was the fourth most important destination country in 2009, with more than 40,000 asylum claims registered with the UNHCR office, mostly people from Myanmar (94 %). The Global report says that the highest number of new asylum claim was filed by individuals originating from Zimbabwe (153,200) and Myanmar (Burma) 48,600. Three-quarters of asylum claims lodged by citizens of Myanmar were registered.

About 500,000 Burmese migrants work in Malaysia, legally and illegally, according to the Kuala Lumpur-based Burma Workers’ Rights Protection Committee.

The flow of refugees from Burma to Thailand, Malaysia and other countries has cost Burma’s neighbours millions of dollars in food and humanitarian assistance. The Burma Refugee Organization calls on officials of impacted ASEAN countries to measure the financial cost of hosting refugees displaced from Burma, and to request financial compensation from Burma’s military junta for costs incurred in caring for the refugees.

It asks the government of Malaysia to address the trafficking, selling and slavery of Burmese and other migrants within Malaysia and across its border with Thailand. As a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Malaysia is urged to consider alternatives to detention for refugees and asylum seekers, especially for women and children.

ASEAN has a major role to play in the elections, however flawed it may be. It has to function as a link between Myanmar and the international community and vice-versa. Myanmar can be persuaded to have observers at least from ASEAN.

The international community, while exerting pressure for release of political prisoners and for the elections to be inclusive, free and fair, should be prepared to interact with the new government and seek opportunities for positive changes towards democracy.

We are extremely disappointed about the junta’s preparations for the upcoming elections and urge all concerned parties to exert pressure in order to ensure that the Burmese military regime is not able to make the upcoming elections a complete sham.

Blogger Demowaiyan, Alinsek & Kamikaze

16, September, 2010

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