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Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has arrived in Australia to much fanfare and media attention.
It’s not hard to see why; for more than two decades she has been a persistent fighter for political change in Myanmar. In fact, the freedom to express dissent without inciting violence could well be Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s legacy.
But it’s yet to be seen what she could achieve in parliament, a former ambassador turned ANU academic says.
For more than 20 years, Suu Kyi sought the release of political prisoners in the former military junta, advocated sanctions against the government, and tried to rally support for her party, the National League for Democracy.
“More than anyone else, she has sought to ensure that governments in her country pay greater attention to the needs of the ordinary people,” ANU College of Asia and the Pacific visiting fellow Trevor Wilson said ahead of her impending visit to the Australian National University this week – where she will receive an honorary doctorate.
Sidelined from contesting Myanmar’s 2010 election because it was held a week before her release from one of many periods of house arrests, Suu Kyi announced in June this year she wanted to become president in 2015, when national elections are planned as part of an ongoing transition from decades of military rule.
Commenting on the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate’s chances, Wilson said a military-drafted constitution which disqualifies her from being a candidate for president, because her two sons and late husband are foreigners, was not necessarily the end of the matter.
“The parliament recently set up a committee to consider revisions to the constitution before the elections, leading some observers to predict that a deal might clear the way for a Suu Kyi presidency,” Wilson pointed out.
Read the full article at the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.
Like Corazon Aquino in the Philippines, Daw Aung Suu Kyi is a symbol to many Burmese. However, not having had the opportunity of political office, her leadership and technocratic skills remain a question. There are inspirational leaders who have much charisma and charm, but aren’t necessarily good technocrats; the Oval Office in Washington, DC has one at the moment.
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I hope someone with a conscience take this opportunity to challenge her position regarding the Rohingyas, the growing anti-Islamic sentiments (and the 969 movement), and her role in perpetuating this continued racist campaign. Much could also be said about her silence in the nation-wide ceasefire initiative, especially in relation to continued fighting with the KIA.
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I’m glad to oblige!
The simplistic naive blue-eyed Western view of Burma (a country of almost 60 million): black vs white, good vs evil, ethnics (noble savages) vs “bama tatmadaw” (brutal ethnic-cleansing guys), Posh Lady (Suu Kyi with an Oxford accent) vs junta generals (ignorant uneducated morons), etc. etc. is of course very amateurish and facile. Let me add my fifty cents as someone whose ancestors were poor humble peasants from Burma. In Myanmar or Burma or Birmanie or Phama or Mian-Dian or whatever, you just change names. You don’t change the actors, you change their roles. Names are like smoke, roles are like mirrors. A lot of smoke and mirrors in Naypyitaw the “abode of the rulers”. Burmese are very fond of the theatre of the marionettes! Burma has always been ruled by a feudal oligarchy (Suu Kyi definitely belongs to the top echelon of the food chain) since the days of the monarchy, operating on the medieval principles of intrigues, coercion, nepotism, patronage and “appanage”. Connections (guanxi in Chinese) are the key to the web of power. Suu Kyi (most Burmese don’t put their father’s name in front of your name, unless he is famous!) might be considered a “Burmese idol” or a “human rights icon” for many people in the West like Bono (the U2 guy), but in Burma her fame and her “authority” (“awza” in Burmese, she doesn’t have power=“ana” yet until she becomes President) comes from the fact that her father Aung San was a national(istic) hero worshiped by the majority of the populace. He died early so we would never know if Burma would be very different now if he wasn’t assassinated. What Burma needs is a French Revolution of sorts (you know the kind that says: Liberté, ├Йgalité, Fraternité) before Suu Kyi gives another (in my opinion rather boring) lecture about democracy and “rule of law” (so what’s the citizenship law in Burma?) In order to share the “Burmese Peacock Throne” with the ex-junta-generals, Suu Kyi is busy collecting brownie points from the ex-junta generals and their Chinese paymasters. She recently strongly endorsed a Chinese copper mine which was poisoning the ancestral lands and ruining the livelihoods of the local farmers. I don’t know how much the “Lady’s” lakeside villa (her former prison) in Rangoon is worth, but here’s how the Chinese company treats the poor rural population in Burma: “570 farmers had received a total of 17.8 million kyat (US $20,300) for more than 1,700 acres of land” (each farmer gets less than 40 bucks and each acre (full of copper) is worth less than 15 bucks? Unbelievable exploitation and total disrespect of fellow human beings in this day and age. Burmese (sorry Myanmarese!) should give the wretched Rohingyas a break and look at what the Chinese are doing to their country.
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Tocharian,
“You doth protest too much..”
Your Joseph Conrad or George Orwell world
is populated by only one person…YOU.
Now having said that, you are right about
how the Chinese are treating Burma, because
that’s how China treats every country. You
think China doesn’t own Hun Sen and Cambodia or Laos ? But get over your neo-whatever view that all Westerners wear mosquito hats and dress in all whites and play polo on fine trimmed lawns and take tea at 4 PM. That day has long past, except for the Royal Family, and even they are feeling the economic pinch of reality. Some non-Burmese (Professor David Steinberg comes to mind) GET Burma, and they
understand Burma well.
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One Burmese traditional story goes that when you get to a village with one-eyed people, you better cover up one of your eyes. Same goes with limping and so on.
Poor Toch swimming against the tide and rubbing against the grain does look lonesome. But it is not secure conclusion that he (let’s say it is “he”)is alone on that “Paranoia Planet”. It is not entirely secure conclusion either that even Drum Major Wilson does believe in what he espouses. At least one certainly hopes so. Otherwise he and subject of his project “Posh Lady” of Toch would be implying that those “Bewildered Herds of Ignorant and Meddlesome OUTSIDERS” ie. Illiterate and (therefore uneducated – because education is conditional on reading and reading alone)people of Latpadaung are not of their choice word “ordinary people”. Unless of course one can prove that those idiots of Latpadaung are “communists” and agitators as Than Myint Oo said or “paid agents” as Zarganar (Great Democracy Revolutionary per Excellence)described or that nauseating word “hardliners” standing in the way of “Progress and Freedom”. One does so wish those land owners simply curl and die quietly letting this juggernaut of “Astonishing Reforms” to keep on poisoning the lands and destroy the pristine rivers em mass now with full co-corporation of the once antagonistic “rebel” forces thoroughly bribed and encircled by the international NGO’s with ample and robust supports from the media and academics.
Toch’s Chinese fixation? Well, that is a story not even half told yet.
By the way this “Orwell”, that is spot on. Burma today is the very real dramatization of the Animal Farm and 1984 together on full and ig-glorious (or is it glorious) display.
Irony is this woman who is now supporting any thing the Sit-tut guys do is really acting for the international conglomerates AGAINST the interest of culture, roots and welfare of the a]majority public of Burma exactly as she was used to be labelled by her new found best friends. There surely is no rational retort for the assertions of Roland Watson http://www.dictatorwatch.org/articles/suukyimugabe.pdf or Guy Horton’s http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2140042/aung_san_suu_kyi_complicity_with_tyranny.html
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Accusing the Buddha of philandering is akin to blaming DASSK the primary advocator to ROL in Myanmar for the present Rohingyas/East Indians/Royal British Indian SUjects / Muslim Kalas vs Buddhist Yakhine and Bamar sectarian violence
Until the Muslim Kalas learn to live/coexist as minority as in Maulamyain the violence will continue even if the ROL/long over due just Immigration Laws are implemented.
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. . . but can A-may Suu Kyi also be *Mother* to all the children of Myanmar who are not Buddhist but happen to be Animists, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Zoroastrians, among others.
Vile monks are today openly spreading hatred — unheard of in living memory — and parading with placards denouncing spirit worship and *beastly* Islam. Not to mention the Christians in Kachin and Karen states forver under siege.
What price democracy?
The Burmese people are sick and tired of politics and warfare. They want their leaders to end their differences and make the country safe for diversity.
Instead of devoting massive sums of money to weapons, the *enlightened* leaders should divert them to combat ignorance, poverty and disease.
And, pigs will fly.
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“Mother” to all, “Vile monks”, throwing in “Christian in Kachin and Karen states forever under siege” for good measure.
BurmeseDaze
‘Not mentioning any initial causes’ of present miseries indeed make you sound like A Johnny come lately DASSK bashing.
Firstly, she might just become the president yet.
Secondly, if she does she will be more influential than present Thein Sein.
Thirdly, WHat transpire when she is in Hlutthaw is beyond her mean or capability for just change. It is always easier to be the rebel outside.
For example Rohingya fate which you and Tocharian constantly complaint about started from Saudi money has taken on a global involvement with OIC. Stay tune this problem will not go away yet.
Better pray to AllaH or Jehovah that ROL advocating DASSK prevail just as Trevor is predicting.
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Plan B,
“B” isn’t working; please get another plan !
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Peter Cohen
After all is said and restated of plan B and repeated declared “ad nauseam per most here at New Mandala”, look like your ignorance of plan B, make you look rather listless the least.
Just to be fair and bring you up to speed:
“It is about the citizenry”. Sir.
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IMHO, General Min Aung Hlaing the Army Chief who is rumored to be retiring soon to be able to participate in 2015 general elections has more chance to become the president in 2015 than ASSK whose party NLD in Buddhist-Burmese eyes is quickly becoming a Socialist party sympathetic to Muslims and also too close to foreign powers like US and EU.
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You mean as opposed to the Tatmadaw, which
is a wholly-owned subsidiary of China/Russia/North Korea Inc. ?
What you say about the NLD is patent nonsense.
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NLD surely as racist and idiotic as any other busybodies in Burma for sure. But the Sit-tut being in the Red Inc. or implication of being only in it is not quite true.
Current academia and “media” around the world is surely owned and operated the honourable “Democratic Countries”. After all all the higher learning centres are stepping over each other to prove how obedient they are to the funders all over the world and all the media are owned and run by precious few. The very ones who crowed endlessly about the WMD’s in Iraq and how evil Gadaffi was and now how evil Assad is even though they have not a clue more than what Susan Rice, the well known Truth Sayer says.
That media and academia have been in overdrive to pump up the Strawman Government of Burma for the last 3 years with totally shameless 180 turnabout. That can only happen only if Burma, and its now more solidified than ever in hisotry toliterian dictators in sheep skin (Longyi they call it in Burma)are in the sphere of the “Western Democracies” or the “Advanced Civilised World”.
Look at how the Jewish american embassador was giving a sermon at the impromptu Monks’ congress after their well orchastrated Muslim Pogrom gone a bit overboard pulling too much unwanted attention- what with burning live poeple in day light and beating defenseless people under the lenses and stabbing 92 year old woman 35 times and those well demarcated burning of the Muslim quarters, some of which are now to be build into hotels and resorts.
After all Chinese the dogs simply shooed the Burma the animal into the path of the gunmen the Yanks and Co. Remember the dogs always get fed!
And the NLD and the Papa’s army are so united in their desire for looting of the land off the traditional owners (no legal papers making things easier) and and move millions of landwoner traditional farmers into a-dollar- a-day wage earners to spend the rest of their miserable and “liberated” lives in strike/work/out-of-work/ suicide and drug haze circles (with those goody-two-shoe trade unions supporting them of course).
Current play of disembowelling of the Burma carcass carried out in unison is indeed a sad sight.
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It was a true pleasure watching the live streaming broadcast of Aung San Suu Kyi’s ANU conferral ceremony today.
Thein Sein also received two honorary PhDs at approximately the same time (9am) today at his presidential palace in Nay Pyi Taw.
One in Public Administration from Mae Fah Luang University, Chiang Rai, Thailand, and one in IT from Naraesuan University, Pitsanuok, Thailand.
While the top global universities are praising and acclaiming Aung Sang Suu Kyi for her efforts towards democracy, human rights and peaceful protest, several Thai universities have done their best to applaud his reforms.
Does the former top ranking Thai military brass that comprises the Boards of these Thai universities have anything to do with their decisions to honour Myanmar’s president? Or is it a simple marketing stunt for more international students?
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Beyond all these accolades and adulation isn’t it about time all that pile these adulation really offer help that really count?
Help in heath, education and economic well being to the citizenry that will eventually promote Rule of Law.
Starting with proper training to Judges and Solicitors to the real meaning of Justice?
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