မိတ္ေဆြမ်ားခင္ဗ်ား။
ျပည္တြင္းမွ
ေဆာင္းပါးရွင္ ကိုရန္ေနာင္ ေပးပို႕လာသည္ကို မူရင္းအတိုင္းျဖန္႕ေ၀ပါသည္။
ရွင္းလင္းစြာဖတ္လိုပါက ပူးတြဲပါ ဖိုင္မ်ားကိုဖြင့္၍ဖတ္ႏိုင္ပါသည္။
ေလးစားစြျဖင့္
ခ်ိဳေမာင္
Burma’s Superficial
Change and Dutch Disease
Burmese Generals
changed their uniforms and entered into the political sphere as civilian
politicians. They performed a trick to its democratic archrival National League
for Democracy (NLD) party lead by Aung San Suu Kyi. Former General Thein Sein
who was a puppet of Senior General Than Shwe shed his uniform and became a
civilian President.
He made a speedy move,
which astonished many Burmese watchers and pro-democracy groups. First he released ASSK from house
arrest. Second, he released series of
prisoners including prominent student leaders but he did not admit the
existence of political prisoners in Burma.
Thirdly, he eased restriction on the press and allowed the formation of
labor unions. In addition, he closed his
eyes and did not take action against the students who formed students unions in
their respective colleges. In the past students who formed the student unions
were severely punished and received 7 to 15 year prison terms. De Nyein Lin who
formed the student union was sentenced to 10 years. After he was released from prison Mr. Lin was
not allowed to pursue his unfinished studies. The new policy of “don’t oppose,
don’t recognize” gives birth to the formation of civic organizations. As a result, students, young monks, and lawyer’s
organizations emerged within short period, but the government did not allow
them to register or recognize as official organizations.
All are seen as real
change to foreigners including USA and EU.
Finally the last trap made by Thein Sein’s Government is to lure Aung
San Suu Kyi and her party to enter the by-election in April. Before the election Suu’s party demanded to
change some of the wording of election rules and regulation from “safeguard and
protect the constitution” to “respect and follow the constitution”. Thein Sein compromised and changed what NLD
was asking. As a result, NLD entered the
by-election and contested 44 out of 45 constituencies and won 43 of it. It was a surprise for the ruling party USDP
to lose all the constituencies that they won in the 2010 election. Also it was a stunning victory for NLD.
It was not only victory
of the NLD to entering the by-election but also the Thein Sein government got a
huge victory for allowing NLD to participate in the by-election. After the election President Thein Sein
welcomed the victory of NLD from ASEAN summit and demanded the West and US to
lift the sanction with his ASEAN counter parts.
The West hailed the election as free and fair and postponed the sanction
for a year. Japan agreed to wash all the
3.5 billion debts that Burma owes.
But the real catch
came when all the elected NLD members were going to be sworn as parliament
members and there was a glitch. In the 2008 constitution it said elected
parliament members have to be sworn in the Hluttaw (Parliament) to “safeguard
and protect the constitution”. NLD
requested to change the wording like in the election law. But this time Thein Sein’s government refused
to change it.
According to the
constitution if someone wants to change the constitution it need an approval
from 75% plus 1 parliament members. The
President cannot change the constitution like election law. So NLD elected members have to wait for
changing the wording that they desire.
At the same time the
Army chief of Staff General Min Aung Hlaing reshuffled the army parliament
members with the high-ranking officers.
It is an indication of the coming Parliament; the tougher army
non-elected parliament members will stand firmly against all kinds of effort to
change the military-led constitution.
The reason for reshuffling
the new senior army officers such as Brigadier Generals, and Colonels in the
parliament is because the army-backed party lost the by-election miserably and
the Generals are afraid that they might lose grip in the parliament. The Lt. Colonels above the rank in the army
has privileged status in Burma since Ne Win era. So those privileged people will definitely
defend the NLD-led initiative to change the 2008 constitution by all
means. The junior officers who were
replaced by the senior officers do not have the privileged status and they too
want to see the unconditional release of political prisoners and real
democratic change.
Also the question is:
Has the Army Chief of Staff a power to
change the non-elected army personnel in the parliament without informing the
parliament? Because the parliament is meant to run by parliamentary members who
were elected by the people. The current
reshuffle made by General Min Aung Hlaing without respecting the parliament is
unacceptable and insulting the existing parliament. The elected civilian parliament members
cannot replace overnight but the non-elected military members can change any
time by the general is not a fair game.
It proved that even though there was an election and the elected members
but the army chief of staff has the power to control the parliament.
Thein
Sein now kicked the ball to the parliament’s side and said this issue is out of
his hand and NLD has to deal with the parliament if they want to change the
wording. He will not be against it but
according to the amendment NLD needs 75% plus 1 parliament member to endorse
it.
Now the sanction has
been postponed and some are already lifted.
A lot of business people from Japan are ready to come into Burma and so are
the US and European’s corporations. NLD
will be stuck in the wording problem and Burmese people will face the “Dutch
disease” soon.
Yan Naung (Thone Ze-
Thayawaddy)
April 24, 2012
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Attachment(s) from cho maung
2 of 2 File(s)
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