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2 The loss of Myanmar's democratic
voice By Brian McCartan
BANGKOK - Myanmar's ruling State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC) has received strong
international condemnation for its crackdown on
anti-government protestors in September, with the
United Nations, the European Union, the United
States and the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations all calling on the junta to open dialog
with the opposition and move towards democracy.
But even if the SPDC were willing to compromise,
which despite the international pressure seems
unlikely, it's not
clear with whom the junta
should really be negotiating.
The
demonstrations which began in August were
initially led by a group of former student
activists and long-time political prisoners known
as the 88 Generation Student Group, which has its
activist roots in the 1988 pro-democracy protests
the military brutally squashed. Within a few days
the group's leaders were arrested and the gauntlet
was taken up by the Buddhist clergy, which was
also cracked down on. Myanmar's largest
pro-democracy opposition party, the National
League for Democracy (NLD), in the main stayed on
the sidelines.
The one-hour meeting
between NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the
junta's appointed liaison officer, retired Major
General Aung Kyi, last Thursday has been widely
viewed as yet another disingenuous move by the
SPDC to pay mere lip service to the international
call for dialogue. Only this time the NLD's
credibility is also at stake.
NLD
secretary U Lwin set the tone for the party's
stance on the demonstrations in an August 25
interview with Radio Free Asia, in which he said:
"In fact, they [Myanmar's problems] won't be
solved just through protests." He went on to
question the relevance of the protests due to
their small size. Although these statements were
made at the beginning of the protests, the NLD's
official line never changed, even when it became
clear that the protests enjoyed widespread popular
support.
The NLD had two opportunities to
demonstrate its leadership of Myanmar's battered
and bruised pro-democracy movement and its claimed
position as the people's elected representative.
First, the arrest of the 88 Student Generation
Group's leadership presented the opportunity for
the NLD to assume the leadership over the
protests, but instead it stayed silent and allowed
the Buddhist clergy to take the baton.
When the demonstrations grew to over
100,000 in Yangon and tens of thousands elsewhere,
the opportunity arose again for the NLD to show
its leadership and leverage its organizational
powers to provide proper focus for the movement's
democratic demands. Instead, other than a rather
weak statement on September 14 that limited the
party to blaming the generals for the protests and
calling for political dialogue leading to national
reconciliation, NLD participation in the protests
came only through individuals rather than as a
collective political force.
To be sure,
the 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations were
initially disorganized. Street protests which were
at first organized around student groups from
various university campuses around Yangon were
later joined by newly formed trade unions and an
underground monks' movement, but remained
leaderless for several months. Although activists
like Min Ko Naing and Moe Thi Zon had strong
popular support, there was no real leader with the
stature and charisma to bind all the groups under
a cohesive banner until Aung San Suu Kyi, the
daughter of independence hero Aung San, made a
speech to several hundred thousand people at
Shwedagon Pagoda on August 25, 1988. This was five
months after demonstrations first began in March
of that year.
Suu Kyi was later joined by
former General Tin Oo and together with other
politicians they formed the National League for
Democracy (NLD). With the formation of the NLD,
the Burmese people finally had leaders and an
opposition party to follow. Although many other
parties were formed in the lead-up to the 1990
elections, the NLD was widely recognized as the
chief opposition party. This was borne out when
the NLD won a whopping 82% majority of the vote
during the elections, despite the fact that by
that time both Suu Kyi and Tin Oo were under house
arrest.
Democracy delayed The
military government, surprised if not shocked at
the landslide election results against them,
declared that a new constitution would have to be
created before a new government could be formed,
an announcement which effectively nullified the
results of the election. A national convention was
formed to create the new charter, but after
several attempts the NLD walked out in 1995,
declaring that it was unwilling to sign off on the
regime's diktats. The convention stalled until
2004 when the SPDC revived the process, though
this time without the NLD.
At the same
time, most of the other political parties had
either been declared illegal or pressured into
disbanding. Although several regional,
ethnic-based parties survived, the NLD has
remained as the only party with a national support
base. Yet the NLD has suffered from its own
internal problems. Although never formally
outlawed, the party has come under tremendous
military pressure. Suu Kyi has spent most of the
past 19 years under house arrest. Tin Oo has also
been in and out of prison or under house arrest
for much of that time. The party's regional
offices have been systematically closed down by
the government, with only the decrepit party
headquarters in Yangon now permitted to remain
open.
The party itself has suffered from
periodic waves of pressure by the regime for its
members to resign their affiliation. The
resignations from NLD members in Yangon and
elsewhere across the country are often published
in the state media, usually alongside supposed
coerced statements by the individuals that they
now recognize the NLD as not working for the good
of the country and that they will no longer
participate in politics.
Mass rallies,
often organized by the junta's de facto political
party, the Union Solidarity Development
Association (USDA), have ridiculed Suu Kyi and the
NLD. The USDA has also been
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