Burma Democratic Concern has the firm determination to carry on doing until the democracy restore in Burma.

Sunday 3 May 2009

Shwegondaing Declaration’s Quandary of Responses


Quietly Burma’s government has responded to the National League for De3mocracy’s *Shwegondaing Declaration. Armed security forces have been taking positions around the city of Rangoon and other areas within Burma. Some people are critical of the NLD response to Than Shwe’s election plans, most notably Burmese political analyst Aung Naing Oo was quoted as saying;

“If the NLD considers itself a revolutionary group, then they should clearly reject the junta’s elections on grounds that it would be manipulated, but if they consider themselves a political party, it would be wise for them to contest the elections.”

I approached Myo Thein, Director of Burma Democratic Concern and posed the question about the uncertainty of the National League for Democracy’s stance. I also addressed the concerns of complacency by the NLD. Myo Thein issued a clarification in this statement.

The position of the National League for Democracy:

(a) Release of All the Political Prisoners

(b) Review of the Draft Constitution (2008) which are not in accord with democratic principles.

This is referring to the cases such as military is taking 25% of the seats, military commander is in absolute authority and military can dissolve the parliament any time, etc. Here, NLD is meant to amend such things. (Undemocratic)

(c) NLD’s offices should be reopened immediately together with those of the parties of ethnic nationalities.

NLD is demanding that the junta to reopen all party offices.

(d) Recognition of the result of the 1990 Election

Here what NLD means is to reconvene the people’s parliament based on 1990 elections result which can be translated as the recognition of 1990 elections results.

(e) Political Dialogue

Agenda of the dialogue envisaged by the League is as follows:

(1) Dialogue by the decision makers (Aung San Suu Kyi and Senior General Than Shwe).

(2) Dialogues issues

equal opportunities for the ethnic nationalities:

release of all political prisoners :

review of the 2008 Constitution;

recognition of the People’s Parliament which is the result of 1990 election (the next step of the election is to allow to convene people’s parliament to election wining party);

issues of the elections of the future:

development of the living condition of the people

(3) To arrange to recognize the result of the 1990 elections

Here NLD meant to say that allow us the convene parliament which can be translated as recognizing 1990 election result. At the parliament, we will approve the outcomes of the dialogue.

(4) All the stake holders to follow unitedly the political course for the future delineated by the agreements of the dialogue as adopted by the People’s Parliament.

Here NLD meant to say that we are ready to cooperate with you.

(f) Attitude towards the Possible Future Elections

The following are the NLD’s minimum conditions required to determine whether or not to participate in the 2010 election. Areas of concern are;

IF the military junta unilaterally conducts the proposed elections under the conditions prescribe by their own plan.

And;

IF:

(1) All the political prisoners unconditionally released,

(2) The provisions of the (2008) Constitution were amended,

(3) All inclusive free and fair general election were held under international supervision:

Then it intends to participate in the elections only after gravely considering as a special case and after studying the coming Party Registration Act and the Laws relating to the Elections.

Myo Thein

Director

Burma Democratic Concern

Clearly Gen Than Shwe was using extortion tactics in forcing the hand of the NLD and to a major extent they needed to issue a response. After reading Myo Thein’s response to my query it is obvious the NLD is still holding fast the core tenets of their position.

With security forces moving into position at this juncture I question the junta’s motives since strong arm tactics have always been the rule of thumb in dealing with any form of opposition.

The stage is set for a test of wills and hopefully the junta will choose the mature and progressive route in resolving the issue of reconciliation. Bloodshed only led Burma down the path of social and economic ruin. It is far cry from the gem of the Orient she once was. With the world watching the outcome is yet to be determined.

* http://www.mizzima.com/news/election-2010/2044-nld-sets-pre-conditions-for-role-in-elections.html

Your Devil’s Advocate

Buffalohair

အေမ နဲ ့ ပန္းတစ္ပြင့္

၂၀၀၈ ေမလ ၃ရက္...
တိတိက်က်ေၿပာရရင္ ၂၀၀၈ ေမလ၂ရက္ေန ့ညနဲ ့ ၃ရက္ေန ့မနက္ေပါ့...
ဒီလိုေၿပာရင္ ခင္ဗ်ားတို ့ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ား မွတ္မိၾကမယ္လို ့ထင္ပါတယ္...
'ပန္းနဲ ့ေပါက္တာ မနာပါဘူး' ဆိုတဲ့စကားနဲ ့လံုး၀ဆန္ ့က်င္ဘက္... 'အလြန္လွပေသာပန္း' လို ့ အဓိပၸာယ္ရတဲ့ ပန္းတစ္ပြင့္ေၾကာင့္ ကံဆိုးမိုးေမွာင္က်ခဲ့တဲ့ေန ့...
satellite ကရိုက္ထားတဲ့ အၿဖဴေရာင္ပန္းတစ္ပြင့္ ငြားငြားစြင့္စြင့္ပြင့္အာေနသလိုမ်ဳိးပံုရိပ္က ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို ့အားလံုးရဲ ့မ်က္ရည္ေတြကိုလဲ ခ်ဴသြားႏိုင္ေလာက္ေအာင္ကို ရက္ရက္စက္စက္လွလြန္းပါတယ္...

ပန္းတစ္ပြင့္ရဲ ့အထုပၸတၱိလို ့ဆိုႏိုင္ေလာက္ေအာင္ပဲ ပန္းတစ္ပြင့္က စခဲ့တဲ့ဂယက္ေတြကေတာ့ တကယ့္ကို အုန္းအုန္းကၽြတ္ကၽြတ္ပါပဲ...
တစ္ေန ့တစ္ေန ့ အင္တာနက္စာမ်က္ႏွာေပၚေတြကေနၿမင္ေနေတြ ့ေနရတဲ့ ဆန္ၿပဳတ္တစ္ခြက္ရဖို ့ တဆာဆာေအာ္ေနတဲ့ အသံေတြ၊ ကေလးမုန္ ့လုစားတဲ့ၿဖစ္ရပ္ေတြ၊ တိရစာၱန္ေလာက္မွ စာနာစိတ္မရွိတဲ့ 'လူ'အမည္ခံ သတၱ၀ါေတြ၊ အမွန္ၿခစ္အမွားၿခစ္ကိစၥေတြ၊ ေရထဲမွာေမွ်ာေနတဲ့ ေခြးေသပုတ္သာသာ လူ ့အေလာင္းေကာင္ေတြ...
ဒီၿမင္ကြင္းေတြ ဒီပံုရိပ္ေတြကိုပဲ (ကိုယ့္စိတ္ကိုယ္ႏွိပ္စက္တယ္ပဲဆိုဆို) တစ္ေန ့တစ္ေန ့ထိုင္ၾကည့္ၿပီး အရူးတစ္ေယာက္လို အံေတြၾကိတ္ မ်က္ရည္ေတြက်ခဲ့ရတဲ့ညေတြ...
ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ဘ၀အတြက္ေတာ့ တကယ့္ကို အိပ္မက္ဆိုးပါပဲ...
စားလဲဒီစိတ္၊ သြားလဲဒီစိတ္ဆိုသလိုပဲ ေၿဖခါနီးစာေမးပြဲေတြကို စိတ္မေရာက္ႏိုင္ေတာ့ေလာက္ေအာင္ လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့၃လေလာက္ထဲကၾကိဳ၀ယ္ထားၿပီးသား ၿမန္မာၿပည္ၿပန္ဖို ့ေလယာဥ္လက္မွတ္ကိုပဲ အားမလိုအားမရၾကည့္ရင္း ၁၆ရက္ေလာက္ပဲလိုတဲ့အခ်ိန္ေတြကို ေရတြက္ရတ့ဲေန ့ေတြေလာက္ ရင္ပူရတာမ်ဳိး ကၽြန္ေတာ္မၾကံဳခဲ့ဖူးပါဘူး...

မၿပန္ခင္ထဲက ၾကိဳတင္စီစဥ္ထားတဲ့အတိုင္း အိမ္ၿပန္ေရာက္ေရာက္ခ်င္း ကၽြန္ေတာ္ပထမဦးဆံုးအားထုတ္ခဲ့တာကေတာ့ ဒီခရီးစဥ္ေတြကိစၥပါပဲ...
လက္လွမ္းမီသေလာက္ေနရာေတြသြားရင္း တကယ္တမ္း မ်က္၀ါးထင္ထင္ေတြ ့လိုက္ရတဲ့အခါမွာေတာ့ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္လို over-passionate ၿဖစ္တဲ့သူအဖို ့ မ်က္ရည္မဆယ္ႏိုင္ေလာက္ေအာင္ပါပဲ...
ဆန္တစ္ထုတ္ရဖို ့ ၾကံဳ ့ၾကံဳ ့ေလးတန္းစီထိုင္ေနတဲ့ ေတာင္သူဦးၾကီးၿမန္မာလူမ်ဳိးေတြ အရင္က ခင္ဗ်ားၿမင္ဖူးလား...
ကားေပၚကပစ္ခ်ေပးတဲ့ အ၀တ္ေတြကို ကားၾကိတ္မွာမေၾကာက္မလန္ ့ ေအာ္ဟစ္ေၿပးလႊားလုယူေနတဲ့ ၿမန္မာလူမ်ဳိးေတြ အရင္က ခင္ဗ်ားၾကံဳဖူးလား...
မနက္ၿဖန္အသက္ရွင္ဖို ့ လမ္းမတေလွ်ာက္ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္ေရာင္ၿခည္အၿပည့္နဲ ့ ငုတ္တုတ္ထိုင္ေစာင့္ေနရတဲ့ ၿမန္မာလူမ်ဳိးေတြ အရင္က ခင္ဗ်ားေတြ ့ဖူးလား...

အခုဆိုရင္ ပန္းတစ္ပြင့္ရဲ ့က်ိန္စာကို ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို ့ေတြ ခါးစည္းခံခဲ့ရတာ တစ္ႏွစ္တင္းတင္းၿပည့္ခဲ့ပါၿပီ...
ဒီေန ့ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္စိတ္ထဲမွာ ေမးခြန္းေတြနဲ ့ၿပည့္ႏွက္ေနတယ္...
ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို ့ ဘာေတြ ထိထိေရာက္ေရာက္လုပ္ေပးခဲ့ၿပီးၿပီလဲ...
ဘာေတြလုပ္ေပးဖို ့လိုေသးလဲ...
ဘာေတြလုပ္ေပးႏိုင္ဦးမလဲ...
ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို ့ေတြ တကယ္ပဲ ဒီက်ိန္စာကေန လြတ္ေၿမာက္ခဲ့ၿပီလား...
ၿမင္ေအာင္ၾကည့္ပါ... ၾကားေအာင္နားေထာင္ပါ... ေလ့လာသံုးသပ္ပါ...
ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို ့ကမ္းေပးမဲ့လက္ေတြကို ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ေနတဲ့မ်က္၀န္းေတြ သိန္းနဲ ့ခ်ီရွိေသးတယ္...
ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို ့ကိုကူညီဖို ့ေအာ္ေခၚေနတဲ့အသံေတြ နားနဲ ့မဆံ့ေအာင္က်န္ေသးတယ္...
ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို ့လက္လမ္းမမီသေလာက္ ကယ္တင္ေပးရမဲ့ ေသြးခ်င္းေမာင္ႏွမရဲ ့ဘ၀ေတြ အမ်ားၾကီးရွိေနပါေသးတယ္...
ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို ့ၾကံဳခံရတဲ့ တစ္ညတာ က်ိန္စာဟာ ယေန ့ တစ္ႏွစ္တင္းတင္းၿပည့္တာေတာင္ မၿပယ္ေသးပါဘူးလို ့ေၿပာရင္း...

"ဘယ္သူေတြဘယ္ေလာက္ပဲ အက်ည္းတန္တယ္ေၿပာၾကပါေစ... ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အတြက္ေတာ့ အေမဟာ အၿမဲတမ္းက်က္သေရအရွိဆံုးပါပဲ အေမ....."

ေမတၱာၿဖင့္...
ပံုၾကီး...

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=75793981628&ref=nf

LIKELY OUT COME OF BURMA'S 2010 ELECTIONS

The endgame scenario, from the point of Burmese military junta, will be the monopolisation of political decision-making power through its self-created political parties like USDA or NUP ally, plus 25% seat of the military without having to enter election, as prescribed by its self-drawn constitution.

With the voice for dropping various sanctions getting louder with the day, encouraged by the Obama's overture of sending one senior diplomat to Naypyidaw lately after so many years, the timing of the junta's complete control of the electoral outcome would be welcomed by most states for two simply reasons. One is none other than acknowledging the junta supremacy, even if it is known to be a sham and stage-managed election. The motto of "If can’t beat them join them" has been there for nothing. And the other is the growing fatigue for having to endure the never-ending people’s struggle against the junta, without ever reaching the climax. And as such, any kind of ending is desirable, provided it comes to an end, at least from the point of international stakeholders.

As it is, the concerned, international stakeholders would applaud the 2010 election and normalcy or relation with the West will be restored, making everyone happy, except, of course, the oppressed people of Burma.

Shan Herald-http://www.shanland.org/

Junta leaders trying to win people with phones

Civil servants in Mong Yang, Eastern Shan State, have been promised with cheap mobile phones, in order to secure their support, according to sources from the “Sino-Burma border.

“The generals said they would provide 200 telephones to persuade local people to vote for the party,” a civil servant told SHAN.

The report came following a visit made by Prime Minister General Thein Sein, accompanied by Shan State-Kayah State Commander, Lieutenant General Min Aung Hlaing, on 25 April, and held a meeting with local authorities and village headmen to talk about the planned 2010 elections.

People in Mong Yang are using Chinese mobile phone which are cheap and easy to use. They are not interested in junta’s offer, said another.

Currently, the retail price is 2.3 million Kyat ($ 2,300) for a line phone and 1.9 million Kyat ($ 1,900) for a GSM. The overall official price for each handset will be 1 million but it eventually will cost the same price. “The telephone provided by the junta is only for civil servants and businessmen. After civil servants get the telephone, they will sell it again to the local people at market price,” said a source from Tachilek.

“The gist of the speech of the (PM) Thein Sein was that we should not vote for any party that is not supported by the junta, that we should vote for only the Burmese Socialist Program Party which is now called the National Unity Party (NUP) or other parties formed by the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA),” said a civil servant from Keng Tung.

According to another source from Keng Tung who recently returned from Rangoon, the USDA has been given a free hand to collect fund, to be used in canvassing support from the people. “The USDA may be divided into three separate parties,” he added.

According to The National from United Arab Emirates, 6 April issue, Thein Sein is of the opium that “We cannot afford to lose this election. Otherwise, we have wasted the last 20 years for nothing.”

SHAN HERALD-www.shandland.org