Democracy in Myanmar

Posted by admin on Sep 2, 2010 in World Democracy Online | 0 comments

Democracy in Myanmar

Democracy In Myanmar- an Oxymoron

The concept is no more than a contradiction, in a country where the daughter of a national hero, still lies under house arrest.
The ruling Burmese military junta has kept democracy under lock and key since Beatlemania. When General Ne Win first put an independent Burma under lockdown, Fidel Castro was just getting settled in Havana. That the Southeast Asian nation, under the thumb of despot Senior General Than Shwe, is set to hold democratic elections next year, is of little consolation to those inside and outside the country who have tried in vain to affect change behind the lines of the cabalists for the last decades.
A recent visit by the UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, for what UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon envisioned as “a view to further promoting national dialogue and reconciliation,” had Gambari left out in the cold by the Senior General, who was apparently attending to more urgent activities. So insular are the Generals, they built from scratch a new city for themselves from which to rule. They say they will hold democratic elections in 2010.
The generals have shown they are contemptuous in the extreme to outside interference, evidenced by their self-sabotage in the wake of Cyclone Nargis last year, where most international aid workers ready to help were stranded in Bangkok waiting for visas that never came (they waited for business or tourist visas—Myanmar does not offer a visa for aid workers).
“Let them eat worms,” said one general after the disaster that left thousands of Burmese homeless. The Saffron Revolution less than two years ago was quashed with brutality. At the time, photos in Thai newspapers of the army shooting down pods of protesting monks in Yangon and Mandalay, were as crass as they were cruel.
Democracy in Burma: The concept is no more than an oxymoron in a country where the woman who won a landslide victory in the country’s last democratic election in 1990 etches the 14th consecutive year of house arrest into the walls of her Yangon residence. The legal leader of Myanmar is guarded around the clock by military guards.
Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of a national hero in Myanmar before the 1962 coup d’état, has been absent at various ceremonies around the world that would bestow awards, as prestigious as the Nobel Peace Prize, on her. 2008 was the year the junta was set to review her sentence, but it found the 63 year-old detainee too fierce a threat to let roam freely.
A free and democratic election would likely give Suu Kyi and her party their day in the sun, as according to various reports on the ground, she still enjoys much public support. The junta’s public willingness to go through with the electoral process is perplexing, but according to recent articles published in Asia Times Online, the junta is operating in complete accordance with its character.
On a recent visit to Burma, reporter Jacob

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