Burma's farcical referendum highlights junta's absurdity

Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun

May 05, 2008 - It is frequently a trait of generals and other very senior military officers that they have absolutely no sense of the ridiculous.

They can get involved in the most farcical activities without any realization that they are making themselves laughing-stocks.

Mind you, given some of the thoroughly unpleasant decisions military officers sometimes have to make, having no sense of the surreal may be a necessary survival mechanism.

Even so, it is hard not to laugh out loud at the insistence by the military regime running Burma that next Saturday's referendum on a new constitution for the southeast Asian nation is a firm step toward multi-party democracy.

Without a whiff of a sense of irony, the junta, headed by Senior Gen. Than Shwe, is so insistent that the new constitution is a good and democratic thing they have made it punishable by up to 10 years in prison for anyone to urge people to vote "no."

So the opposition National League for Democracy led by detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has had a hard time conveying its strong reservations about this proposed constitution -- which seems to achieve little except to ensure the military will continue to be the ultimate power and authority in Burma.

While opponents of the constitutional model have been silenced, senior figures in the junta and their thoroughly unpleasant grassroots political operatives have been using all forms of coercion -- from physical violence to threats to withdraw government services such as the water supply -- to impress on people the necessity of voting "yes."

Burmese voters may, of course, relish this opportunity to vote. They haven't been asked to do that since 1990, when 85 per cent of them plumped for Suu Kyi and the NLD.

The generals were appalled, annulled the election, kept Suu Kyi and hundreds of NLD leaders locked up, and slowly discussed how to avoid such a nasty thing happening again.

So it has taken 14 years to get to this point -- step five in the junta's seven-step road map to its version of democracy. And only the junta's hand-picked delegates, not Suu Kyi or the NLD, have been involved in evolving the constitutional proposals, a process which has primarily involved the delegates listening to speeches by army officers.

It does not look, however, that very many Burmese will get a chance to vote, however keen they may be to do so.

The generals say there are just over four million eligible voters, which seems extraordinarily low in a country with a population of over 42 million. Several outside observer organizations reckon there should be about 23 million eligible voters.

But as the whole process is a farce, it probably doesn't really matter.

The constitutional proposals are an adaption of those used by former president Suharto of Indonesia to control a thinly disguised military dictatorship for 32 years.

The junta's model for Burma begins by saying that the country's president must hail from the military, which gives a good indication of where this document is heading.

Then, a quarter of the parliamentary seats will be allocated to people nominated by the military.

The military will also fully control and appoint the ministers to several key ministries, including Defence and the Interior -- which is the department managing internal security.

To cap it off, the military reserves the right to oust any civilian administration it feels is putting national security in jeopardy.

This bizarre construction is meant, according to the junta, to provide a fine framework for multi-party elections in 2010.

The chances of that happening do not appear to be good. It is far more likely that what will emerge is, again, the highly directed form of democracy that functioned in Indonesia until Suharto was ousted by a popular uprising in 1998. There were a variety of political parties, but even those with designated "opposition" roles functioned as pantomime puppets manipulated from above by the military.

And Suu Kyi, who frightens the generals the way mice terrify elephants, will be allowed no role under the new dispensation.

The junta has already proclaimed that no one who is or has been married to a foreigner is eligible for public office. Suu Kyi was married to the British scholar of Tibet and Buddhism, Michael Aris, who died of cancer in 1999.

Sun International Affairs Columnist

To reach Jonathan Manthorpe, go to his blog at: www.vancouversun.com/blogs

Canada Com

Commentary: Let’s hope the UN gets it right this time

By Bo Kyi

Jul 16, 2008 (DVB)–The basic strategy of the United Nations special envoy so far appears to have been to yield to the regime. How far will aspirations and demands slip in his future dealings with the Burmese military? The envoy's next visit to the country will be a test.

Mr Ibrahim Gambari, UN special envoy to Burma, has been invited to return to Burma in mid-August to continue his mediation efforts. The question is: what will his mission be this time?

Many sources close to the UN told me that the envoy is likely to continue pinning his hopes on the regime's seven-step road map, which the UN once viewed as a potential process for democratization in Burma.

In late 2007, Mr Gambari also said, "[The UN] Secretary-General did not reject the seven-step Road Map and what he would like to suggest were inclusiveness and a time frame."

Many key opposition groups, especially the election-winning National League for Democracy and ethnic political parties, might come to agree with the UN that the junta's seven-step road map could still be a viable option for Burma's transition if it was modified to become inclusive and time-bound.

In August 2001, 92 elected members of parliament from inside Burma called for this change in the road map in their public statement. They demanded that the regime modify the road map. The elected MPs said that if the regime made it inclusive, they would like to cooperate and find a political solution within the road map framework.

On 12 November last year, in the wake of September’s Saffron Revolution, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon said that “a return to the status quo that existed before the crisis is not sustainable,” and that he “encourages the government and all relevant parties to redouble their efforts towards achieving national reconciliation, democracy and full respect for human rights”.

The UN made two proposals to the junta, namely that Burma should set up a broad-based constitutional revision commission in order to ensure an inclusive political process and that a poverty alleviation commission should be established. The regime's supreme leader Than Shwe rejected them and finalized the constitution draft. Then the UN suggested that the junta invite international observers to the referendum. That suggestion fell on deaf ears too.

The regime has now declared that they have completed four of the seven steps of the road map. Step one, the National Convention process, took more than 14 years to finish and excluded legitimate political parties such as the NLD, whose leaders are imprisoned.

Instead the military’s handpicked delegations took part in the convention and drew up a draft constitution which simply provides for the continuation and consolidation of military rule. The impunity for members of the State Peace and Development Council and its predecessor the State Law and Order Restoration Council enshrined in the constitution paves the way for further human rights violations against Burma’s people.

In May the junta held a national referendum to approve the draft constitution, despite Ban Ki-moon and the international community’s calls for them to postpone the referendum in order to focus on the massive cyclone relief operation. Moreover, the referendum took place in a climate of harassment, intimidation and fraud to secure the result the junta wanted, much like the run-off presidential election in Zimbabwe. At the time, people in Burma were in mourning because of Cyclone Nargis, which killed over 140,000 and left 2.4 million people suffering. The UN and the international community witnessed the junta’s callous attitude towards its own citizens. The regime shamelessly claimed that their proposed constitution was approved by 92.4 percent of the population.

Now, it is blindingly obvious that the substance of the constitution is undemocratic and, more importantly, that the whole process of implementing the road map has been lacking inclusiveness and transparency.

Special envoy Gambari once encouraged political parties in Burma to participate within the framework of the seven-step road map set out by the junta. All key opposition groups accepted his request and acted accordingly. But the regime has rejected the envoy’s proposals.

So now what?

According to some UN sources I know, the danger now is that the UN is exhausting its persuasive capacity and is shifting towards a yielding approach.

In his press briefing on May 27, Ban Ki-moon said that he "urged them [Than Shwe and the generals] that the seven-point democratization programme should be put into implementation as soon as possible" during his meeting with Than Shwe in Naypyidaw.

The seven-point democratization programme? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Is Ban confusing speed with substance?

Since Than Shwe shot down all the UN’s proposals, the secretary-general must know that this road map is not headed in the right direction.

Now Burmese democracy activists fear that the UN envoy will encourage the NLD party to participate in the 2010 election. Since the unilateral implementation of the road map is unacceptable, the party has already rejected the referendum results and the upcoming election as a sham. Aye Thar Aung, an ethnic leader in Burma, hit the nail on the head when he recently said, "the real necessary step is to develop national reconciliation to bring a true democratic system to our country". He is right. In order to take that necessary step, the UN good offices should not imagine that the “softly, softly” yielding approach will work with the regime.

The message for the UN envoy is simple:

Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon should instruct Gambari to reiterate that the regime must adapt its seven-step road map so that it ensures a peaceful transition to democracy, including the redrafting of the constitution by means of a transparent, participatory process. That process must involve representatives of political parties like the NLD and Burma’s ethnic nationalities. Gambari must also call for the release of all political prisoners.

If the seven-step road map truly represented the way forward for a peaceful transition to democracy, then activists and opposition groups might be prepared to rethink their participation within its framework.

If Gambari cannot persuade the regime to take these essential steps, then the secretary-general must declare that the regime’s roadmap is no longer relevant. He must strongly encourage the UN Security Council to use an enforcement mechanism to bring about progress on democratic transition in Burma. If not, the UN will fail again and Burmese activists may reluctantly conclude that the UN is in fact complicit with the regime.

Bo Kyi is a former political prisoner and currently works as a joint secretary for the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma).

JEG's NOTES;
1) According to the NC or Referendum laws or constitutions DASSK is barred as she was married to a foreigner.
http://please-help-burma.blogspot.com/search?q=%22married+to+foreigner%22

2) a) She is not considered since the referendum "obsolete"

3) b) The New Light of Myanmar newspaper says Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy should PREPARE (it does not say contest, prepare to accept perhaps?) for new elections in 2010 instead of clinging to the results of the 1990 vote. (the 2010 elections have already been won and we are still living 2008)
http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-07-06-voa34.cfm

New Myanmar constitution keeps military dominant

Bangkok, 08 April, (Asiantribune.com): Leaked copies of Myanmar’s new constitution secretly circulating in Yangon, shows that the military will receive sweeping powers that ensure its dominance even after elections.

Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained pro-democracy leader who is juntas most formidable foe, is barred from the presidency and she would be unlikely to qualify even for a parliamentary seat, the document shows.

Suu Kyi, 62, was married to British academic Michael Aris from 1972 until his death in 1999, and as such was entitled to hold a British passport. Therefore, the detained Nobel laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will not be allowed to stand for election in the army-ruled Myanmar because she was once married to a foreigner the draft of the proposed constitution says.

A copy of the draft charter confirmed that a “person who is entitled to rights and privileges of a foreign government or a citizen of a foreign country” cannot run for office.

The ruling junta plans to bring the constitution to a referendum in May, in anticipation of elections slated for 2010.

The public has so far had no chance to review the final draft, and a handful of leaked copies of the 194-page document are the only versions so far available.

Accordingly the leaked draft, it clearly shows that while the constitution would set up a civilian government and grant civil rights to the people, it is peppered with caveats that allow the military to easily reassert direct control in the interest of national security.

State of emergency could be declared not only to battle insurgencies, but to combat the threat of ‘disintegration of national solidarity’. The military would receive immunity from prosecution for actions taken under emergency rule.

Existing security laws used to jail political dissidents and suppress dissent would remain in effect, and parties would be required to practice discipline.

In the meantime it is learnt that the Prison authorities in Insein prison are reportedly trying to convince inmates to support the national referendum in May in exchange for an early release.

But under the referendum law introduced in February this year, people serving prison terms for any offence are ineligible to vote while they are detained.

On the other hand, Opposition leaders are urging the Burmese living inside Burma to decisively cast ‘No’ votes in the forthcoming referendum.

“We urge the people from all walks of life, ethnic nationalities and their organizations to go to the polling stations without fail and to decisively cast a ‘No’ vote”

- Asian Tribune -

Myanmar's junta has rejected a United Nations suggestion that international observers

Yangon - Myanmar's junta has rejected a United Nations suggestion that international observers be allowed to observe the upcoming referendum on the country's new constitution scheduled in May this year, state media reports said Sunday.

UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari proposed that international observers be allowed to assure the referendum is free and fair in tlaks held Friday with Thaung Nyunt, who heads the Commission for Holding Referendum, reported The New Light of Myanmar, a government mouthpiece.

'Thaung Nyunt replied that holding the referendum for the constitution is within the State sovereignty,' said the newspaper in a detailed reprint of the talks between Thaung Nyunt and Gambari.

'Besides, there were no instances of foreign observers monitoring the events like a referendum. In the referendums for the 1947 and 1974 constitutions also, there were no foreign observers,' the head of the referendum commission said.

Gambari reportedly countered that the observers did not need to be from abroad, a suggestion Thaung Nyunt promised he would 'bear it in mind.'

Myanmar will hold a referendum on an unspecified date in May to endorse a controversial draft constitution compiled over the past 14 years by a military-appointed forum that will enshrine the military's role as a powerful political force in any future elected government.

The date of the referendum will be announced 21 days prior to the event. It will be followed by a general election in 2010 as part of the ruling junta's 'seven step road map' to democracy.

Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962, when former strongman Ne Win staged a coup that overthrew the elected government of U Nu, Myanmar's first and last elected prime minister since the country gained independence from Great Britain in 1948.

A referendum held in 1974 to endorse Myanmar's previous constitution was a rigged affair, with 'yes' and 'no' boxes clearly marked to allow authorities to know how people had voted.

There are worries that the May referendum will be similarly manipulated, although Thaung Nyunt assured Gamabri, who arrived in Yangon on Thursday, that it would be carried out in accordance with international standards.

The refusal to allow international observers was deemed a second blow to Gambari's mission. Prior to his talks with the referendum holding committee, Myanmar Information Minister Kyaw Hsan informed Gambari that no amendments will be allowed to the draft constitution, which in its current form bars opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from contesting the polls.

The UN has urged the junta to allow Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate whose National League for Democracy (NLD) party won the last election of 1990, be allowed to contest the 2010 polls.

But the draft constitution stipulates that no Myanmar national married to a foreigner is allowed to run for public office. Suu Kyi was married to the late Michael Aris, a British professor at Oxford university.

Gambari met with Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest since May, 2003, Saturday afternoon. The content of their discussion was not immediately known.

Source: Monsters & Critics

Crisis in Burma: A Constitution is More Than a Document

By Rene Wadlow

The tropical cyclone Nargris which struck the Burma Irrawaddy delta on May 3, and the incompetent military response for relief efforts, could be the equivalent of Katrina in New Orleans in showing the incoherence of Myanmar's military government and its disregard of the welfare of its people. The Irrawaddy delta is home for a quarter of country's population of 57 million. The delta is populated largely by the Burman ethnic group which gave its name to the country; about 40 per cent of the total population are ethnic minorities who live in higher areas along the frontiers with Thailand, China, India, and Bangladesh.

The destruction by the cyclone is symbolic of the destruction by the military-led government of the economy and social services. During the 1950s, Burma was considered by specialists as among the potential economic leaders of Asia. Today, after being in power since 1962, the military has gained for Burma a place on the UN list of the planet's poorest.

Prior to the cyclone, the government was planning to hold a referendum on a government-drafted constitution for the country. If all goes as in now planned, the referendum will be held on 10 May in most of the country and in the storm-ravaged areas on 24 May. Were people to vote freely, it is likely that the military constitution would be swept away. However, a free election is most unlikely. Few people understand the nearly 200-page constitution and commentary, and no effort has been made to explain its meaning. The country has been without a constitution since 1989, and one was drafted largely because the UN thinks that constitutions are necessary for the rule of law. However for a constitution to be more than an unread document, it must reflect the needs of the times.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote:

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I am certainly not an advocate of frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. But, I also know that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also and keep pace with the times.

The government of Myanmar (Burma) has invited voters to ratify a new constitution for the state on May 10, 2008. An earlier constitution had been abolished in 1988 when a partly renewed group of military officers pushed General Ne Win into retirement. General Ne Win had ruled Burma from 1958 to 1960 and then from 1962 to 1988 when a non-violent, democratic opposition came to the fore in a month of demonstrations, followed by the coming to power of a group of slightly younger military officers calling themselves the State Law and Order Restoration Council (Slorc) which had cracked down on the pro-democracy demonstrators.

There had been a first constitution drafted just prior to independence from the UK in 1947, largely influenced by English law and practice. It was a quasi-federal constitution with a good deal of authority given to the states where the national minority population live — about half of the population of Burma. Population statistics in Burma are rough approximations. This 1947 constitution was made largely non-operative by the insurgencies that broke out soon after independence led by militias belonging to national minorities fighting for the creation of independent states or greater autonomy within Burma. In addition, there was a strong insurgency of the Burmese Communist Party helped by the then new Communist government of China. In order to have a free hand to fight the insurgencies and to have direct power, the higher military took over in 1958 until 1960 and then from 1962 on.

By 1974 General Ne Win and his Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) had been in power long enough that they felt that the country should have a constitution as most countries have constitutions. The 1974 constitution provided for a more centralized form of government, but there were seven states to represent seven major ethnic groups: Karen, Kachin, Kayah, Shan, Chin, Mon, and Arakanese. In addition there was a "heartland" of seven districts in which the Burman were in the majority and where real power lay. The constitution provoked no great changes in the arbitrary way in which Ne Win ruled, but the constitution did exist in case anyone asked on what basis the government was structured.

In 1988 with the new Slorc in power, in order to mark the shift in power, the 1974 constitution associated with Ne Win was abolished, and some talk of drafting a new constitution started. Some of the pro-democracy leaders of the 1988 demonstrations, fearing arrest by the military, left the capital Rangoon and went to Thailand or to the Thai-Burma frontier where they came into contact with the national minority insurgencies. Representatives of the pro-democracy groups along with the leaders of the ethnic minorities, some monks and especially students created an umbrella organization: the Democratic Alliance of Burma (DAB). The DAB sent representatives to Geneva to present their positions to the UN human rights bodies and to testify to abuses of human rights in Burma. As ideally human rights law is based on both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and on national constitutions which safeguard human rights, my discussions with these DAB representatives turned to a new constitution for Burma. As I am, somewhat, a specialist on federal forms of government, my discussions with the Burmese concerned what could be a federal constitution for a democratic Burma. The Burmese and the representatives of the ethnic minorities knew what they did not want — a centralized state. They had a less clear vision of what forms a federal alternative would take. There was a need to have a clear vision of what people wanted and then to discuss the structures that a government should take.

In 1990, I was going to Cambodia to help set up some child welfare and educational projects and had to spend some time in Bangkok. I suggested to the Myanmar Mission to the UN in Geneva that I could go from Bangkok to Rangoon and lead a three-day seminar for persons who had been elected to Parliament on possible federal structures for the country. The Parliament, in practice, was never called into existence as the Slorc had been defeated by the unexpected victory of the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

The seminar I proposed would have been structured around three themes:

The Spirit of Federalism: Unity, Cooperation and Diversity.

The Structures of Federalism: The State, the Region, the Person.

The Tensions of Federalism: Flexibility in a time of rapid change: Economic challenges and political responses.

This would not have been a constitution-drafting exercise but an effort to clarify the aspirations of different groups and to see if there were structures which could facilitate such aspirations. The Ambassador replied "You may perhaps be aware that there have already existed two constitutions in the Union of Myanmar, and hence our constitutional scholars have had considerable experience in such matters. Moreover, we are at present in the process of scrutinizing the basic constitutional principles and experiences of other states in order to obtain a better perspective of the successes and shortcomings of such undertakings. But admittedly, it is the citizens of Myanmar, who must discuss and decide for themselves as to the form and content of the new constitution to be drawn up. There exist some 135 national races in our country, and thus the new constitution must necessarily encompass the views and aspirations of all citizens, for which purpose coordination will be made among political parties, Hiuttaw respresentatives (the military), representatives of national races and the people.

"Although we thank you for your interest and your kind offer to hold discussions on the matter, we feel that it would be best if such discussions be confined to the people who would be directly affected — the citizens of the Union of Myanmar."

A ‘national convention’ was hand-picked to write a constitution. In practice, it consulted no one. Members of the national convention were not allowed to discuss issues among themselves outside the rare periods in which the convention was in session. Members of the convention whose ideas were too independent were put in jail. Newspapers and media were not allowed to discuss issues of the convention. From 1991 to 2008 is a long time to draft a constitution. I do not want to say that it would have gone faster had the seminars I suggested been held, but 16 years of drafting is slow in any case, even with no debates.

The new constitution still calls for a centralized state which is basically unacceptable to the ethnic minorities. It gives a leading role and a form of veto to the military; it bans election to office of any Burmese married to a foreigner — a clause aimed at Aung San Suu Kyi whose late husband was an English specialist on Tibet and Burmese culture. Why the prohibition continues after the death of the foreign partner is not explained.

The May 10 referendum would be a comedy if so many Burmese were not suffering. After the September-October 2007 demonstrations, the 400,000 Buddhist monks will not be allowed to vote, or convicted criminals or the insane. It is likely that some ethnic minorities will be rounded up to vote on a constitution which they do not understand. There has been no public discussion of the structure and provisions of the constitution.

Constitutions have played little role in the way in which Burma has been governed. The 2008 Third constitution is likely to be no different. Ultimately there is a need to discuss the ways in which a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society can be justly governed. Unfortunately, May 10 will not be a step in that direction.

For more information, see:

Burma: Love and Kindness Must Win Over Everything

Burma: A Growing History of Violence

Burma: Darkness at Midnight

Rene Wadlow is the Representative to the United Nations, Geneva of the Association of World Citizens and the editor of the journal of world politics: www.transnational-perspectives.org

UN envoy’s visit shows momentum slipping on Myanmar

Gulf Times

BANGKOK: UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari’s seeming failure to press the Myanmar junta toward reform has underlined the loss in diplomatic momentum since last year’s bloody crackdown on protests, analysts say.

Gambari arrived in Myanmar last Thursday hoping to persuade the regime to include detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi in plans for a constitutional referendum in May designed to pave the way for elections in 2010.

But with support from regional allies such as China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), the generals have pressed on with a “roadmap to democracy” that the West has decried as a sham.

“What the Burmese military has done is what the Chinese and Asean and even the Indians wanted to see in Burma - the continuation of the roadmap, and for the first time in 20 years there is a timeframe,” said Thailand-based Myanmar expert Aung Naing Oo, referring to the nation by its former name.

Gambari left Myanmar late Monday having twice been rebuffed by the junta on his third visit there since pictures of last September’s violent crackdown on Buddhist monk-led street protests went around the world.

The generals refused to amend the constitution and rejected an offer of UN technical assistance and foreign observers during the referendum.

At least 31 people died last September, according to the United Nations, although Human Rights Watch has put the toll at more than 100, and the world outcry was swift and unified – a consensus that has since fractured.

While China, Russia and some Southeast Asian nations call the referendum a step in the right direction, the US and other Western countries say it aims to entrench the military’s role.

The constitution would bar Aung San Suu Kyi from elections because she was married to a foreigner, while a new law limits her party’s ability to campaign by criminalising public speeches and leaflets about the referendum.

Aung Naing Oo said the split has left Myanmar holding all the cards, with the UN empty-handed.

“I honestly don’t have any hope in the UN’s intervention,” he added. “The Burmese junta knows they have the Chinese protecting them at the UN Security Council.”

The apparent snubs to Gambari, who was also accused on this visit of being biased in favour of the opposition, also show the junta is increasingly immune to the fickle demands of the international community, said Zarni, a visiting fellow at Britain’s Oxford University who goes by one name.

“The last thing the regime would want to do is appear to be appeasing the international community, be it the Chinese or the Americans,” he said.

“These guys draw inspirations from such regimes as Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea etc, which stand up to what they all consider as ‘neo-imperialist’ West.”

Gambari did, however, meet Aung San Suu Kyi twice during his visit, a rare contact with the outside world for the Nobel peace prize winner who has spent 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest.

Aung San Suu Kyi led her National League for Democracy party to a storming election victory in 1990, but the military - which has ruled Myanmar in some form since 1962 - refused to recognise the result.

But the envoy was denied access to senior junta figures, with junta leader Senior General Than Shwe inaccessible in the isolated capital Naypyidaw.

Win Min, a Thailand - based analyst attached to Chiang Mai University, said the only way to bring genuine democratic reform to Myanmar was for the UN Security Council to take harsh action unanimously.
“Only then the regime will listen,” he said.

However, Zarni said, Myanmar was no longer top of the world’s agenda.
The West’s sanctions were simply angering the regime without affecting the top leadership, he added, while China was not keen on forcing Myanmar on to a path to democracy that they themselves did not follow.

“The only silver lining in all this is the regime is not declaring this UN engagement process, whatever it’s worth, dead or unwelcome,” he said. – AFP

Myanmar's spoiled vote for democracy

By Larry Jagan

BANGKOK - On May 10, Myanmar holds a national referendum on a new constitution, a charter which very few of the military-run country's citizens have actually seen and one which the media and commentators are barred from publicly criticizing in the run-up to the vote. If passed, the charter will move the country into a new political era, though one still firmly controlled by the military.

Myanmar's military rulers are leaving little to democratic chance, as they apply restrictions and processes to orchestrate a "yes" vote, which by most international standards will not be considered a free and fair referendum. To be sure, without opinion polls, public sentiment is hard to gauge in Myanmar's tightly controlled society.

The vote significantly represents the first time since 1990 general elections, which military-backed candidates resoundingly lost to the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), that Myanmar's voters will go to the polls. The military famously annulled the 1990 election results and set in slow motion a 14-year process for drafting a new charter aimed at paving the way for new general elections.

There are competing interpretations of what the vote actually means. Some analysts believe both rural and urban voters, frustrated by the government's severe mismanagement of the country, will overwhelmingly vote "no" as an expression of their discontent.

"They see it as a referendum on the military government; so expect a resounding 'no' from them," said a Western aid worker in reference to rural voters in the country's main central rice growing area. "It's the first opportunity since the 1990 election that they have had to express themselves," she said.

Others view it differently. "I'm going to vote 'yes' because I'm tired of the top brass running the country, and doing it very badly," said a military colonel who wanted to remain anonymous due to concerns over his personal safety. "It's time to get them out of government and a new constitution is the only sure way of doing that," he added.

"You don't need to read the constitution to know its simply conferring power on the military for eternity," said an elderly Burmese academic who likewise wanted to remain anonymous. "The choice is simple - a vote in favor of adopting the constitution means we want the military to play the leading role in politics and run the county," he said.

For its part, the military has repeatedly promised the referendum will be transparent, fair and systematic. Political opposition groups and diplomats, meanwhile, have expressed strong concerns that the results could easily be rigged in the military's favor.

For instance, the regime has already said the results at each polling station will not be announced, even at a provincial level. The only announcement of the vote's result will come from the military's equivalent of an electoral commission in the new capital of Naypyidaw. "This is very different from the 1990 elections, when the election results were made public at each local polling station," said Zin Linn, a former political prisoner and now spokesman for the Burmese government in exile. "It means they will be able to manipulate the results to their own ends."

Adding to those concerns is the fact that the general public, not to mention the political opposition, will not be allowed to scrutinize the actual vote counting. A senior general recently told military and government officials in Yangon that only the last ten voters before the polls close would be allowed to stay and witness the actual count.

"These last 10 voters who can monitor the counting of the votes by the poll commission members will certainly be members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association, who Than Shwe has given the job of running the referendum and getting the result he wants," said Win Min, a Burmese academic at Chiang Mai University in northern Thailand.

See no evil

Significantly, international election monitors have been banned from overseeing the vote and it is likely that only a few regime-friendly foreign journalists will be given visas to cover the referendum. Foreign monitoring is essential if the referendum is to have any international credibility, the former United Nations rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Paulo Pinheiro, told Asia Times Online in an exclusive interview.

"After decades without an election, at least international observers could verify the conditions of the vote," said Pinheiro, who served in his UN capacity for seven years through April this year. "And the UN has a unit that just deals with elections, but the military government has refused their help."

"I've been following political transitions throughout the world, including Asia for more than 30 years and I am yet to see a successful transition to democracy without a previous phase of liberalism," he said. "There isn't the faintest sign of that yet in the case of Myanmar."

Indeed, state-run newspapers are predictably flush with statements endorsing the new constitution. "To approve the state constitution is a national duty of the entire people, let us all cast a 'yes' vote in the national interest." Meanwhile the local media have been forbidden from reporting the "no" campaign, which has been perpetuated on the Internet and by political opposition groups.

The government has issued orders banning any criticism of the new constitution and violations are punishable with a possible ten-year jail sentence. Those who have dared to defy those orders have come under physical attack by pro-government thugs and at least twenty young NLD members have recently been arrested for wearing T-shirts that read "Vote No".

The NLD has nonetheless launched a vigorous campaign in opposition to the constitution. "For the people who have the right to vote, we would like to encourage again all voters to go to the polling booths and make an 'x' [no] mark without fear," the NLD urged voters in statement released to the press last week. It nonetheless portrayed the process as a sham. "An intimidating atmosphere for the people is created by physically assaulting some of the members of [the] NLD," its statement read.

International observers endorse that assessment. "The whole process is surreal - to have a referendum where only those who are in favor of the constitution can campaign," said Pinheiro in an interview. "A referendum without some basic freedoms - of assembly, political parties and free speech - is a farce. What the Myanmar government calls a process of democratization is in fact a process of consolidation of an authoritarian regime," he said.

The new constitution took more than 14 years to draft, a tightly controlled process that excluded the NLD's participation. The actual constitution was only revealed to the public a few weeks ago and is now on sale at 1,000 kyat per copy - the equivalent of US$1 in a country where more than eight out of 10 families live on less than $2 a day. Even then it's nearly impossible to find copies, according to Western diplomats who in recent days have scoured the old capital of Yangon in search of the document.

Under the proposed constitution the president must hail from the military, while one-quarter of the parliamentary seats will be nominated by the army chief and key ministries under the military's control, including the defense and interior portfolios. According to the charter's text, the army also reserves the right to oust any civilian administration it deems to have jeopardized national security.

NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, meanwhile, will be barred from politics under the charter because she was married to a foreigner, the eminent British academic and scholar of Tibet and Buddhism, Michael Aris, who died of prostate cancer in 1999. Nonetheless, the military is pitching the passage of the new charter as a step towards multi-party democracy, as laid out in the junta's seven-stage roadmap to democracy.

The junta's second in command, General Maung Aye, recently told a parade of new recruits that the constitution would pave the way for democracy. "Comrades, it is the Tatamadaw [military] that is constantly striving for the emergence of a constitution capable of shaping the multi-party democratic system," he told the army recruits last week.

But even if the junta fixes the referendum's results in its favor, it will face other major challenges in the run-up to general elections in 2010. That includes the formation of a transition government, which will entail the wholesale sacking of the current military cabinet, many of whom have entrenched business interests protected by their positions. It also in theory must allow new political parties to be formed and freely associate and campaign to contest the 2010 polls.

These steps will all likely be delayed substantially if there is a significant "no" vote at next week's referendum. While the real vote count may never be made public, top military leaders will know whether or not voters support their envisaged transition to a form of military-led democracy. Depending on how the people vote, a negative result could cause Than Shwe and other top junta officials to yet again redraw their political reform roadmap.

Larry Jagan previously covered Myanmar politics for the British Broadcasting Corp. He is currently a freelance journalist based in Bangkok.

Asian Times

News for today 21 February 2008

News Summary here. Please follow the links to the respective agencies. Thanks.

UN envoy to Myanmar to hold talks in Indonesia

The UN envoy for Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, is to meet with Indonesia's president and foreign minister from Thursday to discuss the military-ruled regime, his spokeswoman said. Full Report

Myanmar agrees to UN envoy visit in early March, Indonesian minister says

Myanmar will allow UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari to visit the country in early March, Indonesia's foreign minister said Thursday. Full Report

Blacklisted Air Bagan overshoots runway in Myanmar

An aircraft belong to Air Bagan, an airline blacklisted under US sanctions, overshot the runway by 100 metres in Myanmar's northernmost airport of Putao this week, injuring two people, state media reported Thursday. Full Report

Myanmar must re-work constitution, says US

The United States yesterday called Myanmar's proposed constitution a failure over a ban on pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi running for office and urged the ruling junta to "start from scratch." Full Report

Burma: Rice distribution means children can attend school

The World Food Program (WFP) distributed rice to primary students, both boys and girls to support their study in Maungdaw Township on February 15, said a local villager. Full Report

Stop buying Lonely Planet books until BBC withdraws Burma edition

People are being urged to stop buying the Lonely Planet guidebooks until BBC Worldwide - the current owner of the travel series - withdraws its guide to Burma. The call comes today (Thursday) as the TUC, Tourism Concern, Burma Campaign UK and the New Internationalist launch an online petition calling on the immediate withdrawal of the Burma edition. Full Report

Canadian Friends of Burma condemn the murder of Karen leader - OPINION

Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) joins members of the Burma democracy movement around the world in condemning the murder of Pado Mahn Sha, general secretary of the Karen National Union (KNU). The KNU is Burma's oldest ethnic opposition group and represents Burma's largest ethnic minority, the Karen. Full Report

DKBA Members Kill Mahn Sha: Karen Sources

Sources close to the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army have confirmed that members of the Karen splinter group were behind last week’s killing of Karen leader Mahn Sha. Full Report

Gambari’s Mission is Dead in the Water

Although UN Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari hopes to return to Burma in April, his mission is all but over. Full Report

Ethnic Chins Celebrate Chin National Day

Despite decades of oppression, Chin people gather on February 20 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Chin National Day. Full Report

Pro-Democracy Groups Criticize Junta Constitution Plan

Pro-democracy groups have criticized the Burmese junta’s announcement that a draft of the nation’s new constitution had been completed and approved for a national referendum in May. Full Report

Burmese Exiles to Petition Congress on Chevron

The Burmese exiled community in the United States is collecting signatures on a petition urging the US Congress to pass legislation asking the multinational company Chevron to end its investment in Burma. Full Report

Singapore FM: Suu Kyi to be Barred from Voting in 2010

Burma opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will not be allowed to take part in elections proposed by the junta in 2010 because she had been married to a foreigner. Full Report

Chin people will oppose referendum with all its might

On a historic day today, when the Chin people observe the 60th Chin National Day, they vowed they would oppose the referendum by the Burmese military junta in May this year. Full Report

No to referendum and election: NMSP

February 20, 2008 – Chiang Mai – The New Mon State Party (NMSP), one of the ceasefire groups has made it clear that the junta's roadmap of referendum and elections cannot resolve the political crisis in Burma. NMSP became the first ceasefire group which said 'No' to the Burmese regime's announcements February 9. Full Report

Completed constitution should be open for revision: NLD

February 20, 2008 – New Delhi – Burma's main opposition party - National League for Democracy - today said the ruling junta should make its draft constitution available for public review as a step toward conducting a free and fair referendum. Full Report

A country with no hope?

Bangkok Post

April 15, 2008 - The military dictatorship which runs Burma is taking new steps to tighten its already fearful grip on that sad country.

What is most outrageous about this campaign of control by the generals is the claim that its policies will be put to a vote in just under four weeks. The world has seen many free elections, and some whose honesty was questionable. The upcoming vote in Burma will be neither. The so-called national referendum on the military junta's constitution is a laughable charade which hopefully will hoodwink no one into thinking the Burmese regime's polls bear much resemblance to an actual national election.

The May 10 referendum announced by the military junta reverses almost every detail of a free election. The constitution which is the focus of the polls took years to write, but never was debated by the public. A carefully chosen and military-sequestered "national convention" was nothing but a highly controlled rubber-stamp committee. The junta dictated each word of the document. Citizens who want to know what is in the 194-page document being voted on next month have to pay about 30 baht to see it; only government-run bookstores are allowed to distribute it.

The military has already begun a campaign of fear about the polls. Last week, the army and police began a familiar campaign to beat up and warn Burmese trying to organise a "Vote No" campaign. The main opposition leader remains locked up and barred from political activity. In case of doubt, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi is also banned from speaking because she once was married to a foreigner. In fact, the military regime has been conducting constant warnings against speaking with foreigners. It also has warned all embassies in Rangoon against what it calls political involvement.

In Burma, speaking with an opposition member is proof in the generals' eyes of "abetting some local political parties to destabilise the country". Many countries ask outsiders to observe their elections as a sort of seal of approval of honesty. The Burmese rudely rejected UN offers of help to organise the referendum.

Last week, the junta ruled there would be no poll observers at all, except for soldiers, of course. The opposition National League for Democracy, minus the voice of its leader Daw Suu Kyi, asked for poll observers, preferably foreign. Without the natural checks and balances of outside observers, the NLD noted, the referendum could not be fair. Anyone suggesting that soldiers could not count the votes honestly clearly was trying to undermine the Burmese military's plan to move towards democracy.

Next month, the military will cite the referendum as a full mandate to hold power in Burma. A parliament is due to be selected in 2010, at an election as free and fair as the one scheduled for May 10. In Burma, the policy continues to be: no steps forward and two steps back. While citizens are asked to participate in a sham election, they also suffer from the worse-run economy in the region, without hope of prosperity. The generals have effectively encouraged a million Burmese to flee to Thailand and work for a pittance. Burma has become a country almost without hope.

Myanmar bars Suu Kyi from elections under new charter

By Hla Hla Htay
Yahoo News - AFP

YANGON, Feb 20, 2008 (AFP) - Aung San Suu Kyi will not be allowed to run for election under Myanmar's proposed constitution, which has now been drafted ahead of a referendum in May, the military government said Tuesday.

The junta says the referendum -- if approved -- will clear the way for democratic elections in 2010, the first since Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party scored a landslide victory in 1990 polls.

The junta never recognised the result and late Tuesday on state television announced that a special commission had finished the final draft of the charter.

Foreign Minister Nyan Win told a regional gathering in Singapore that the document would bar Aung San Suu Kyi from running because she had been married to a foreigner.

Her party denounced his remarks as "unjust," saying the military appeared to be making plans for the elections before knowing the outcome of the referendum.

"There is not yet a law to govern the elections which are to be held in 2010. It's unjust for the authorities to talk in advance about the elections," NLD spokesman Nyan Win told AFP.

Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said his Myanmar counterpart had explicitly told a gathering of regional ministers that Aung San Suu Kyi would not be allowed to run because she married Michael Aris, a British citizen who died of cancer in Britain in 1999.

They have two children who are also British nationals.

"He (Nyan Win) was quite clear that in the new constitution, a Myanmar citizen who has a foreign husband, who has children not citizens of Myanmar would be disqualified as was of the 1974 constitution," Yeo said.

Nyan Win made the remarks during a dinner cruise off Singapore's waters involving Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers.

Yeo said the foreign ministers expressed their views that the exclusion was "not (in) keeping with the times" and "that certainly such a provision would be very odd in any other country in ASEAN."

But Yeo also said "it is their own country, that is their own history and what can we do about it?"

Myanmar's current junta scrapped the 1974 charter when it seized power in 1988, crushing a pro-democracy uprising as soldiers opened fire on protesters and killed at least 3,000 people.

Two years later, the regime organised elections that the NLD won. The junta ignored the result and instead has kept Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years.

The NLD had warned Monday that in order to achieve democracy, Myanmar's rulers must first respect their victory in the 1990 elections.

Myanmar still has not released the final version of its proposed charter, but the head of the drafting commission, Supreme Court chief justice Aung Toe, indicated in state media that not many changes had been made from guidelines already made public.

In addition to barring Aung San Suu Kyi from office, those guidelines imposed stiff limits on the activities of political parties and reserved one quarter of seats in parliament for serving military officers.

The regime announced its timetable for elections amid mounting international pressure over its crackdown on peaceful demonstrations led by Buddhist monks in September, when the United Nations says at least 31 people were killed.

A group of Nobel laureates called Wednesday for an arms embargo against Myanmar, dismissing elections planned for 2010 as flawed if Aung San Suu Kyi is barred.

The seven laureates, including Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and South Africa's anti-apartheid cleric Desmond Tutu, said the junta should face sanctions for its crackdown on monks.

Myanmar's generals have ignored calls to free Aung San Suu Kyi and open a political dialogue, instead sticking to their own "road map," which critics say will enshrine the military's rule.

The UN special envoy for Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, has visited Myanmar twice since September in a bid to open talks between Aung San Suu Kyi and the military.

The junta had told him that he would not be allowed to return to the country until April 15, but Gambari said Tuesday in Beijing that he expected to be allowed to return to the country "way before" then.

Where giants jostle

March 1, 2008 - Northern Burma is being transformed by China and India. Hamish McDonald reports from behind the bamboo curtain. Photographs by Kate Geraghty.

Sittwe is a mouldering port of 200,000 people on the neglected Arakan coast of Burma, visited by a few foreigners heading upriver to the ruined pagodas and palaces of an ancient kingdom inland. In five years from now, it promises to be transformed into one of the strategic hubs of Asia, figuring in the calculations of planners and analysts all the way to Washington.

"Think of it as a new Panama Canal," says one well-connected businessman in Rangoon.

A multibillion-dollar deepwater port on a nearby island will receive giant oil tankers from the Middle East and Africa, pumping their cargoes into pipelines that will stretch inland to energy-hungry China, avoiding the choke points of the Strait of Malacca controlled by the US Navy and its allies. Other pipelines will take natural gas from the huge reserves being defined off the Arakan coast and Burma's Gulf of Martaban.

Meanwhile, the Indian Special Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar has just been in Rangoon, nailing down agreement on a new all-weather highway from India's Imphal via Kalemyo to Mandalay, which by 2010 will give India's restive and isolated north-eastern states an alternative outlet to the tenuous route to Kolkata through the "bird's neck" of territory along the Brahmaputra valley.

Across the top of Burma, the Indians are also pouring huge investments into restoring the World War II "Stillwell Road" that once took supplies to the Chinese nationalists fighting the Japanese, relinking the Indian town of Ledo to Myitkyina, north of Mandalay, from where the road leads into China.

At Sittwe, India is also contesting Chinese dominance or any plans to add this port to Beijing's "string of pearls", strategic ports across the Indian Ocean. India plans to dredge the Kaladan River flowing to Sittwe from the north and turn it into a transport corridor for its isolated state of Mizoram.

India is quietly trying to warn Burma's ruling generals about the dangers of too close an embrace by China, a traditional enemy.

"There are sufficient reasons to suspect the junta would prefer to contain, if possible, the overwhelming influence of China," says the veteran New Delhi diplomatic analyst Subhash Chakravarti, a confidant of successive Indian prime ministers. "Its natural choice to seek to do so is to encourage a larger Indian presence in the country."

In return, Burma is helping India suppress its own insurgencies.

"India is hopelessly vulnerable to tribal insurgency in its north-east frontier," Chakravarti says. "We can hardly ensure security there without full co-operation with Burma, which has lately been a splendid success. As a result, India's earlier open criticism of the junta [in diplomatic statements and on All India Radio] is more muted."

But so far, China is winning hands down. Recently, New Delhi was stunned when the Burmese junta ruled that gas from the massive Block A-1 field, being opened up by two Indian state energy firms with South Korea's Daewoo group, would be sold to China instead of going to India by undersea pipeline, and probably (diplomats in Rangoon say) at concessional prices.

We crossed from the gleaming Chinese border city of Ruili into Burma, escorted by a travel agent designated by the Burmese Government. From boom-time China, which had mobile phone coverage and automatic teller machines even in this far corner, it was a short walk into the 1970s: shabby shops fronting shanty houses; old ex-Japanese cars; cycles.

Down the old Burma Road and through five checkpoints to the town of Lashio, where our travel agent minder left us, the economic invasion by China was apparent all around.

Just outside Burma's border town of Muse, facing Ruili, long convoys of 10- and 12-wheel trucks rolled into an export-import checking station extending over a kilometre in length. Stacks of teak logs from Burma's forests waited marked and graded in a lumber yard, ready for shipment into China.

Truckloads of watermelons and other high-value produce, grown by Chinese farmers on rented land with hired Burmese labour, were heading towards China, while young Burmese men, sheepish at being photographed, were driving smuggled Chinese-made motorcycles without numberplates down towards Mandalay. Vast tracts of land, some controlled by the Tatmadaw (Burma's military), were planted with sugar cane, pineapples and cassava (for biofuel) for sale or processing in China.

Later, on the Irrawaddy River outside Bhamo, another town close to China, our boat was packed with polythene-wrapped motorbikes, probably brought across the small, locals-only border crossing nearby.

The Burma Road from the Chinese border to Mandalay is now the toll-collecting fiefdom of Asia World, a construction company run by Stephen Law, son of the former heroin warlord Lo Hsin Han, who was brought into the fold by the junta in 1992 and given the road concession as reward.

Deep in the Shan hills off the road, the Burmese authorities claim to have reduced the opium-growing area to a small fraction of its heyday when the Cold War gave a measure of protection to the country's anti-communist regime. The main illegal game is now the amphetamine laboratories hidden in the eastern corner of Shan state.

But this is well out of sight, like the casinos and brothels that used to attract customers from Chinese border towns slipping across on day passes. Locals in Muse said these had shifted to northern Laos.

In this consciously cleaned-up relationship, China's links with Burma are more pervasive than any simple trade-off of munitions and diplomatic backing for the Burmese generals in return for oil and timber (at the official level) and drugs and trafficked women (in the black markets).

As well as being the planned outlet to the Indian Ocean, Burma has become an open market for China's hungry entrepreneurs and traders, like Mr Lin from the manufacturing powerhouse of Wenzhou. He crossed the border with us on the way to his factory in Rangoon, where 40 Burmese workers earning the equivalent of $30 a month make metal shop awnings and shutters.

In the former British hill station of Maymyo (now Pyin Oo Lwin), one of the 5000 Chinese residents celebrating the lunar new year at the town's Chinese pagoda said the Chinese had emerged in 1996 from intense suspicion provoked by Beijing's Cultural Revolution-era support for the now defunct Burmese communist parties (which included a cross-border invasion in 1968-71). "Things are much better now," he said, to the sound of firecrackers.

In the tourist town of Bagan, an ethnic Chinese businessman talked of plans to help open a Confucius Institute in Burma, part of Beijing's drive for "soft power" by teaching its language and culture. Of Burma's efforts to persuade the world it is moving to democracy, he said: " I hope it doesn't happen. As long as this country doesn't open to the Western countries, people like me will benefit from the strong China-Burma relationship."

FOR the Sittwe plans to materialise, very big natural and political obstacles have to be overcome. For one thing, northern Burma and China's neighbouring Yunnan are cut by soaring mountain ranges running north-south to the eastern end of the Himalayas, with massive rivers such as the Salween and Mekong cutting into chasms thousands of metres deep. Putting roads and pipelines across this country will be fraught with engineering obstacles and expense.

Right from the Arakan shoreline, Burma teems with ethnic groups that have many reasons to hate the ruling junta and disrupt its economic underpinnings.

North of Sittwe live as many as 1.5 million Muslims known as the Rohingya who are denied citizenship or ethnic identity in Burma and neighbouring Bangladesh. Subject to harsh surveillance and restrictions (including a requirement to get permits for local travel), the Rohingya would seem a fertile recruiting ground for violent groups.

Further inland, the Tatmadaw has run a network of local truces with a score of rebel armies and their splinter groups since the mid-1990s, often giving them a slice of cross-border duty collection.

On a road junction between Myitkyina and Bhamo, leading off to a small frontier post, was a large two-storey office signposted as

belonging to the Kachin Independence Organisation, a former separatist movement that signed a truce in 1994.

In the small town of Hsipaw we encountered General Saing Lo, the weather-beaten chief of the Shan State Army, which ended hostilities in 1996. He was supervising a tournament among his men at the local Dodhtawaddy Tennis Club to celebrate Shan Independence Day, his new-model Toyota LandCruiser parked outside with his army's sticker on the windscreen. "Did you watch the Australian Open?" he asked. "We could only see it on a DVD here."

The deals have allowed the Tatmadaw to focus its efforts on crushing the remaining holdout rebel groups along the Thai border, based among the ethnic Karen, Karenni, Shan and Mon. More than doubled in size since the 1988 student uprising, the Tatmadaw is now 450,000 strong and rated as one of the most capable armies in the region.

In recent years, mainstream offensive units have kept up the pressure on the rebels in an unrelenting "four cuts" strategy aimed at denying them food, money, information and recruits. The civilian population has borne the brunt of this pressure, maintained now through the wet and dry seasons, with some 140,000 people pushed into refugee camps. The Karen have just suffered a devastating blow in the assassination of their promising new leader, Pado Manh Sha, in the Thai border town of Mae Sot, apparently by a hit squad who fled into Burma.

While the population remains among the most miserably poor in Asia, the Tatmadaw sequesters between 40 and 70 per cent of government revenue, plus cuts from business associates, and is re-equipping itself with modern arms including MiG-29 fighters from Russia, better artillery and communications.

Western intelligence agencies are intrigued by reopened negotiations with Russia for a small nuclear reactor, satellite images of uranium mining and a mysterious delivery of containers by North Korean ships that Burma insists were just allowed to make port calls as "vessels in distress".

One question is whether the ethnic minorities can be permanently bought off or whether new splinter groups will emerge to pose a violent challenge, if only to shake the money tree. A bigger mystery is the ultimate stability of the deeply unpopular Tatmadaw regime and whether it can rely indefinitely on violent suppression.

Security in the central belt of the country north from Rangoon depends on a pervasive and permanent counterinsurgency-style campaign against its own people, involving thousands of Military Intelligence personnel running informer networks and muscle squads throughout the country.

Random checks are mounted on ordinary households for unregistered guests and jailing is automatic for any lapses. Official tirades assail the "lies from the skies" broadcast by Voice of America, the BBC and the Democratic Voice of Burma, which recently began direct satellite TV signals.

Diplomats say the apparent hesitation to crack down on protests sparked by fuel price rises in August and September was deliberate, not a sign of weakness. The delay allowed a massive intelligence operation in which thousands of undercover agents took pictures and identified demonstrators and sympathisers.

Two of the generals said in some reports to have refused to order troops to open fire on crowds have since been promoted, hardly a sign of dissent. Rank-and-file troops showed no hesitation storming monasteries across the country in the midnight crackdown of September 26 against what they were told were "fake monks" acting "contrary to their dharma [spiritual duty]". About 4000 monks and known dissidents were hauled off, of whom most were released after two weeks. About 1100 political prisoners are still in jails and labour camps around the country.

Little escapes the military. On February 12, Burma's official Union Day, the Herald took some photographs of a brass band of the Tatmadaw's White Arrow Division in Bhamo practising by a public road. Three hours later we were hauled off a boat down the Irrawaddy and held for two hours while officers studied our cameras, radioed headquarters for instructions and finally deleted what images of the band they could find. "Anything about the army is very sensitive at this time," an officer explained through a local high-school English teacher called in to interpret.

Than Shwe, the "senior general" heading the State Peace and Development Council (as the junta calls itself), has a firm grip, though at 76 he is showing the effects of diabetes and minor strokes. A former chief of psychological warfare, he employs terror and surprise. In October 2004 he mounted a lightning internal putsch against his powerful but unsuspecting intelligence chief, General Khin Nyunt, now serving a 44-year jail sentence. Just recently, on December 31, Than Shwe underwent an operation for pancreatic cancer in Singapore, leaving the country for two weeks without any move against him.

Although the junta is not sentimental about its dumped leaders (the founding general Ne Win died in 2002 with no state funeral, his daughter in jail and the family banned from publishing eulogies), its power transitions have been bloodless so far. Its No. 3 general, Shwe Mann, 60, is poised as heir apparent.

ON the tarmac at Rangoon's airport sit two new Airbus passenger jets, painted in the white and turquoise colours of the private carrier Air Bagan. The planes began a regular service to Singapore last October, but two weeks later were grounded when a Singapore bank withdrew the purchase credit from the company.

Tay Za, 40, the owner of Air Bagan, is the most visible victim of the "targeted sanctions" imposed by several Western countries after the September crackdown, including Australia, which lists 418 senior regime figures, family members and associates for denial of banking facilities. Described by one Rangoon-based diplomat as the "junta's No. business crony", his Htoo Trading group is said to have a son of General Shwe Mann on its board and to be the channel for Russian military sales, although Tay Za denies any government connections or illegitimate activities.

It was an early strike for a largely untested weapon, showing that the risk of a US Treasury black-listing was enough even for banks in Singapore, a notorious private banking sanctuary for South-East Asia's dubious characters and a member of the Association of South-East Asian Nations cautious about the regional group's no-interference taboo, to cut off a rich Burmese customer.

On February 9, the junta chief Than Shwe surprised diplomats and even tightly controlled local newspapers by announcing that a referendum on a new constitution would be held in May, followed by multiparty general elections in 2010, putting some dates on a vague "road map" to democracy talked about for 14 years.

Subsequent details contain fewer surprises. Enshrining no fewer than 104 "basic principles" laid down by Than Shwe, the constitution will give overwhelming powers to the president, a quarter of seats in the legislature to the military and bar the Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi from standing because she had been married to a foreigner.

Some welcome this as movement of sorts, at least formalising some non-government politics. But with Suu Kyi and the ageing clutch of ex-generals running her National League for Democracy under house arrest and most of the "1988 Generation" of former student leaders back in jail, prospects for anything but a sham democracy are thin.

Many expect the junta to quickly form some token opposition parties to its own civilian cheer squad, the Union Solidarity and Development Association, which claims to have 25 million members (out of Burma's 54 million people). After the shock of the last elections - held in 1990, in which Suu Kyi's party won more than 60 per cent of the vote (a result ignored) - fewer chances will be taken.

But if Than Shwe's decision results from external pressure, it probably came from China, whose leaders have urged the regime to speed up democratisation and which could be worried that Burma will join Darfur on the list of blackmail acupuncture points for the Beijing Olympics.

Western governments are trying to influence China and, to some extent, India to go further. The line is that the stability apparently guaranteed by the Burmese generals is fragile: with the civilian economy running down, poverty widespread in a country once the rice bowl of Asia, HIV and avian influenza menacing and an education system that once attracted students from other regional countries deliberately dumbed down under military rule, Burma could descend into chaos.

But this is close to the argument the West uses to try to persuade China's communists to relax their own monopoly on power. And the same nightmare breakdown scenario is used by the influential historian Thant Myint-U, to argue in his book The River of Lost Footsteps for a policy of engagement, not isolation.

Sanctions don't work against generals who care nothing for the outside world and are obsessed with the risk of multi-ethnic Burma falling apart. "There are no easy options, no quick fixes, no grand strategies that will create democracy in Burma overnight or even over several years," Thant Myint-U wrote. "If Burma were less isolated, if there were more trade, more engagement - more tourism in particular - and this were coupled with a desire by the government for greater economic reform, a rebuilding of state institutions, and slow opening up of space for civil society, then perhaps the condition for political change would emerge over the next decade or so."

But the Tatmadaw, at least, is taking seriously Western fantasies about military intervention. During our journey we asked often whether Sylvester Stallone's new Rambo movie, a gory tale of a rescue mission into Burma, has any underground currency. "Please, you not ask," said one pirate DVD peddler in Rangoon. "The Government not laugh. Four years jail."

Sydney Morning Herald

Myanmar welcomes junta election promise

10 February 2008 - (Reuters) - YANGON - People in Myanmar welcomed the military government’s promise of multi-party elections in 2010 on Sunday as an opportunity to be seized, despite deep scepticism from opposition politicians and abroad.

“Just get on whatever horse you can catch. Then try to find better ones gradually,” a retired professor said four months after the army crushed monk-led, pro-democracy protests, killing at least 31 people.

Roadside food vendor Aung Min, 28, was positively excited. ”I can’t wait to vote in an election,” he said. But, he added: ”The most important is all major parties should be allowed to run in it.”

The junta’s announcement of a May referendum followed by elections in 2010 on state television on Saturday night did not make clear whether detained opposition icon’s Aung San Suu Kyi National League for Democracy would be allowed to take part.

The election would be the first held in the former Burma since 1990, when the NLD won a multi-party vote rejected by the military, which has ruled in various guises since 1962 and detained Suu Kyi for much of the interim.

The NLD was sceptical, asking how the junta could set an election date before knowing the outcome of the referendum.

“I can’t help but wonder how the referendum will be conducted,” NLD spokesman Nyan Win said.

The Burma Campaign UK, a pro-democracy group, dismissed the announcement as “public relations spin” and “nothing to do with democracy”.

“It is no coincidence that the announcement comes at a time when the regime is facing increasing economic sanctions following its brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations,” Campaign director Mark Farmaner said in a statement.

Britain’s Foreign Office called for the release of Suu Kyi and other detained political leaders to ensure a “genuine and inclusive process of national reconciliation”.

Anything’s better

But people in Yangon felt it was a positive development in a country that has seen little of those over the decades.

“It’s just like finding somewhere to live for the homeless. Of course it isn’t the house of our choice, but it will give us some protection,” a retired government officer said.

“We can expect at least a coalition government. That’s far better than now,” he added.

The retired professor said the NLD, which boycotted a national convention working out the principles for a ”disciplined” democracy completed late in 2007 after 14 years, should run in the election.

“If they boycott the election, we will have to wait another three or four decades in deadlock,” he said.

A committee of mainly military officers and civil servants assigned to draft the constitution would finish its work soon, the junta statement said.

“A nationwide referendum will be held in May 2008 to ratify the newly drafted constitution,” it said.

“We have achieved success in economic, social and other sectors and in restoring peace and stability,” said the statement issued in the name of Secretary Number One Lieutenant-General Tin Aung Myint Oo, a top member of the junta.

“So multi-party, democratic elections will be held in 2010.”

Snippets of the constitution’s basic principles, which have appeared in state- controlled media do not point to any transfer of power to a civilian administration, or greater autonomy for Myanmar’s 100-plus ethnic minorities.

The army commander-in-chief will be the most powerful man in the country, able to appoint key ministers and assume power ”in times of emergency”.

The military will hold 25 percent of the seats in the new parliament and hold veto power over its decisions.

The constitution is also believed likely to disbar Suu Kyi from office by ruling out anyone married to a foreigner.

Suu Kyi’s husband, British academic Michael Aris, died 1999.

The surprise announcement from the junta came after Suu Kyi told her party leaders on Jan. 30 that she feared she was being strung along by the generals and worried her meetings with the junta liaison minister might lead to false hope.

Myanmar's awful choice

From Economist.com

A referendum its people cannot win

IN EMBASSIES abroad, voting has already begun in the referendum on Myanmar’s new constitution, which will be held in-country on May 10th. The ruling junta advertises it as an important step forward on its “roadmap” to democratic, civilian rule. If only.

Rather the referendum is, in the words of Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, a “ritual without real content”.

Or perhaps it is even worse than that: a ritual with content, symbolising and confirming the sheer misery of Myanmar’s plight and threatening to make it permanent. A junta-appointed committee took 15 years to draft the constitution, which offers nothing close to democracy.

It gives the army chief the power to intervene in politics at will. Several cabinet seats would be reserved for army officers, as would 25% of seats in both houses of parliament.

A bizarre clause is apparently tailor-made to bar Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained opposition leader, from elected office. When Myanmar last held elections, she was banned because of her foreign connections: she was married to a foreigner and had spent much of her life abroad.

Her husband has since died, and she has been in Myanmar without interruption—mostly under lock and key. Now, however, those whose “children or their spouses” are foreign are excluded. Miss Suu Kyi’s two sons are British, having been deprived of their Burmese citizenship.

Despite all this, some of the regime’s critics used to think the constitution worth voting for: it is, after all, the only chance of change that is on offer. And it does envisage some sort of political process, with a parliament, which implies debate and even, perhaps, disagreement.

To be blithely optimistic, this process might gather a momentum of its own. It might, for example, expose the undoubted rifts within the junta.

And, by bringing in the “ceasefire groups”—representatives of ethnic insurgencies that are at present quiescent—it would bring a formal end to some of the world’s longest-running armed conflicts.

Now, however, it is hard to find anyone outside the junta itself who favours a “yes” vote. There are two main reasons for this. The first is the junta’s brutal suppression of last autumn’s monk-led protests. A much feared and loathed regime proved itself even more hateful.

Second is the strengthening of provisions in the draft designed to make it hard to change it in future. Amendment will require at least 75% of the votes in parliament—ie, including those of some of the soldiers—and 50% of eligible voters in a subsequent referendum.

So the constitution seems a way of entrenching eternal military domination.

Any hint of a campaign for a “no” vote in Myanmar has been suppressed—those caught scrawling graffiti face long jail sentences; T-shirts bearing the word “Nobody”, which were made in Thailand and which Burmese had taken to wearing in discreet protest, are being removed from shop shelves.

With no independent poll-monitors, even if there is a “no” vote, we might never know. The generals will surely remember the embarrassment of being thrashed in the election they held in 1990.

So the looming vote evokes in some activists not the hope of change, however imperfect, but desperation over its impossibility. In that sense, it is comparable to the role of the Beijing Olympics in Tibet—almost a last chance to make a futile protest heard.

In a rare (if minor) incident of terrorism in Myanmar, two small bombs exploded in the centre of Yangon on Sunday April 20th. The government has blamed a group of exiled dissidents. But the one thing Myanmar is not short of is angry, desperate people.

UN envoy to discuss Burma plans

By Jonathan Head
BBC News, Bangkok

March 6, 2008 - The UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari is due to arrive in Burma for his third visit since September's suppressed mass anti-government protests.

He arrives a month after the junta's surprise announcement of plans to hold a referendum on a new constitution in May and democratic elections by 2010.

The proposals have been condemned as a sham by opposition groups.

Mr Gambari is expected to press the government to make the constitutional drafting process more inclusive.

The generals will no doubt present their new plans to Mr Gambari as evidence they are moving towards a restoration of democratic rule.

'Politely ignored'

But opposition groups have said the proposals will in practice leave the military in power.

Under the proposed constitution, 25% of the seats in the new parliament are reserved for armed forces personnel.

The head of state must have military experience - and the charter specifically bars the main opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from holding office, because she was married to a foreigner.

Merely criticising either the constitution or the referendum is a crime punishable by up to 20 years in jail.

Mr Gambari has already urged the government to consult more widely, and to release Ms Suu Kyi, to make the process more credible.

He says he will repeat those demands during this visit, but there is now little time left to persuade the junta to change course.

And with the international community still divided over how to respond to the intransigence of the generals, his pleas are once again likely to be given a polite hearing, and then ignored.

Burma sanctions don't work

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

March 14, 2008, NEW DELHI — Burma today ranks as one of the world's most isolated and sanctioned nations — a situation unlikely to be changed by its ruling junta scheduling a May referendum on a draft constitution and facilitating U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari's third visit in six months.

The referendum and planned 2010 national elections are part of a touted road map to democracy. But the iconic opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, may not be able to contest because the still-undisclosed, military-drawn constitution — in the making for 15 years — is likely to bar anyone who married a foreigner.

Burma is an important state. This is not a Bhutan or a Brunei but Southeast Asia's largest country. It is a resource-rich nation that can become an economic powerhouse if it can remedy its poisoned politics and ethnic divides and dispel international sanctions. And it is a land bridge between South and Southeast Asia. Such is its vantage location that Burma forms the strategic nucleus for India, China and Southeast Asia.

The military has run Burma, once the world's leading rice exporter, for 46 long years. Indeed, Burma's present problems and impoverishment can be tracked back to the defining events of 1962, when General Ne Win deposed elected Prime Minister U Nu, one of the founders of the nonaligned movement.

The callous Ne Win, a devotee of Marx and Stalin, virtually sealed off Burma, banning most external trade and investment, nationalizing companies, halting foreign projects and tourism, and kicking out the Indian business community.

It was not until nearly three decades later that a new generation of military leaders, motivated by Deng Xiaoping's modernization program in China, attempted to ease Burma's international isolation through tentative economic reforms without loosening political controls. Such attempts came much after the military's brutal suppression of the 1988 student-led protests that left several thousand dead or injured — a bloodbath that coincided with the numerology-devoted Ne Win's announcement of retirement on the "most auspicious" day of Aug. 8, 1988 (8.8.88).

While Western aid cutoffs and other penal actions began no sooner than the Burmese junta refused to honor the outcome of the 1990 elections, won by the detained Suu Kyi's party, Burma became a key target of U.S. sanctions policy only in the Bush years.

The new missionary zeal in the U.S. approach, reflected in the 2003 Burma Freedom and Democracy Act banning all imports from that country and several subsequent punitive executive orders, has occurred because of the White House president's wife. Laura Bush's Burma fixation has put the policy establishment in a bind: The more the United States seeks to punish the regime, the more it undercuts its ability to promote political reforms in Burma, and the more its actions threaten to disrupt the lives of ordinary Burmese.

As then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Daley told Congress in late 2003, many garment workers made jobless by U.S. sanctions "have entered the flourishing illegal sex and entertainment industries" in Burma or neighboring states.

While prohibiting new investment by American citizens or entities, Washington has protected the business interests of Chevron Corp., which acquired a stake in the Yadana natural-gas export project in Burma when it bought Unocal Corp. in 2005. Because Unocal's investment in the project, in which France's Total SA holds the biggest stake, predated the imposition of U.S. sanctions, Chevron has used a grandfather clause to stay put in Burma — one of the few large Western companies left there.

The junta, through its remarkable shortsightedness, has only aided Laura Bush's activism. Its crackdown last September on monk-led protests — which, according to a U.N. special rapporteur's report, left at least 31 dead — invited a new round of U.S.-inspired international sanctions. The regime not only continues to detain Suu Kyi, now 62, but also has isolated itself from the public by moving the national capital to remote Nay Pyi Taw, located between Rangoon and Mandalay.

The big losers have been Burma's 58 million people, bearing the brunt of the sanctions, while the only winner is China, a friend of every pariah regime.

Democracy offers the only path to bringing enduring stability to diverse Burma. Genuine participatory processes are necessary to promote ethnic reconciliation in a country that has been at war with itself since its 1948 independence. While the ethnic Burmans, of Tibetan stock, constitute the majority, the non-Burman nationalities (including the Shan and the largely Christian Karen, the first to take up arms) make up one-third of the population.

The oversize Burmese military fancies itself as the builder of a united Burma. Given that ethnic warfare began no sooner than Japanese-trained General Aung San (Suu Kyi's father) persuaded the smaller nationalities to join the union, the military has used the threat of Balkanization to justify its hold on politics.

It trumpets its successes between the late 1980s and early 1990s in crushing a four-decade-long communist insurgency and concluding ceasefire agreements with other underground groups, with just a few outfits left in active resistance. The period since has been viewed by the military as a time to begin state-building, while to the opposition it has been an unending phase of political repression.

Given Burma's potent mix of ethnicity, religion and culture, democracy can serve as a unifying and integrating force, as in India. After all, Burma cannot be indefinitely held together through brute might. But make no mistake: The seeds of democracy will not take root in a stunted economy, battered by widening Western sanctions.

The junta restored the traditional name Myanmar for nationalistic reasons as a break from the colonial past. But Myanmar, meaning the Burman land, carries an ethnic connotation, and Suu Kyi's party continues to use the name Burma. A name change ought to have the imprimatur of an elected government citing a national consensus in favor.

Sanctions have sent Burmese society into a downward spiral of poverty and discontent while strengthening the military's political grip. Today, under the cumulative weight of sanctions, Burma has come full circle: Its 74-year-old senior general, the ailing and delusional Than Shwe, an astrology aficionado, has amassed powers to run a virtual one-man dictatorship in Ne Win-style.

Burma illustrates that sanctions can hurt those they are supposed to protect, especially when they are enforced for long and shut out engagement.

Such is Laura Bush's ability not only to influence U.S. policy but also to orchestrate an international campaign in which she announced Dec. 10 that "India, one of Burma's closest trading partners, has stopped selling arms to the junta."

New Delhi has neither confirmed or denied that. Who can contradict a first lady whose fury on Burma reputedly flows from a meeting with a Karen rape victim and information from a relative with an erstwhile connection to that country?

If the Burmese are to win political freedoms, they need to be first freed from sanctions that rob them of jobs, cripple their economic well-being and retard civil-society development. It is a growing civil society that usually sounds the death knell of a dictatorship.

Years of sanctions have left Burma bereft of an entrepreneurial class but saddled with the military as the only functioning institution — to the extent that the spokesperson for Suu Kyi's party admits the military will have an important role to play in any future government.

To avert looming humanitarian catastrophes, the same international standard applicable to autocratic, no-less-ruthless regimes in next-door China, Bangladesh and Laos should apply to Burma — engage, don't isolate.
Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is the author, most recently, of "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan."

Source: Japan Times