The Fugitive!

The Fugitive တဲ႔..။ ေနာက္ထပ္ ထြက္ေျပးရမယ့္အုပ္စု..... ဘယ္သူေတြမ်ားပါလိမ့္။

TALK OF THE TOWN
The fugitive
By The Nation
Published on August 19, 2008

The decision by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra to flee into exile in London continued to receive wide coverage in the local press. Matichon's edition yesterday featured at least three analysis pieces assessing the consequences of Thaksin's departure.


Niti Eawsriwong said in his column that "I can't predict whether Thaksin will have his day as he said in a statement again. But I believe that things will never be the same again".

Niti said the fact that Thaksin had escaped and snubbed the Thai judicial process would politically handicap him forever. And it will be a serious problem for his people to turn the situation around.

Although many Thai politicians had sought exile in the past, Thaksin is the first politician to seek exile with pending legal cases against him.

Niti described the changing situation in the Thai political system, with the rural sector gaining more say in politics amid widening divisions between the urban middle class and the farmers upcountry. He predicted the situation would continue to be turbulent for a while because politicians failed to respond to social changes.

Matichon's editorial piece said Thaksin should respect the rules and the court. Instead of stubbornly refusing to accept the 2007 Constitution and the agencies set up by the coup, Thaksin and his wife should instead try to clear their names in court. Thaksin should understand that political interference is unacceptable in a legal trial. Otherwise, people will think of his claims as a desperate effort to get away from the responsibility that he is supposed to show.

Thai Rath's editorial piece on the same day criticised the People Power Party's claim that the National Counter Corruption Commission was unlawful. The paper's article was headlined "What's the difference between a gun and money?"

The PPP attacked the NCCC by saying that it was the product of the coup. But Thai Rath said in fact there were a number of agencies and groups born out of the coup, including the Constitution Drafting Assembly, the new Senate and the MPs who were elected via the rules of the Constitution which was drafted by the committee established after the coup.

"The politicians tend to claim that their 'origin' is more sanctified than other agencies because they came from the election. But if the other agencies have been duly appointed, they should accept that.

What would be the difference between the elected politicians and these appointed committees if the latter were formed through money and the abuse of power - which is comparable to the coup in another form?

The only difference is that while one side uses tanks and guns, the other uses money and abuses the government's power," Thai Rath said.

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Suu Kyi - A Living Legend

BURMA: Suu Kyi - A Living Legend
By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Aug 26 (IPS) - Nyo Ohn Myint still remembers the moment, 20 years ago, when the legend of Aung San Suu Kyi began. He was there when she gave a stirring speech and became the symbol of hope for a country under the oppressive grip of military rule since 1962.

The then history teacher at Rangoon University was in a convoy of five vehicles that had taken Suu Kyi, on the morning of Aug. 26, 1988, from her colonial-era home in the Burmese city to a public meeting in front of the great, gold-topped Shwedagon pagoda.

It was slow going, Nyo Ohn Myint, then 25, recalls. They had taken an hour to cover the three-mile distance. And that first major public appearance for Suu Kyi gained significance in the wake of the brutal crackdown over two weeks before when Burmese troops had shot to death some 3,000 unarmed people protesting against the military dictatorship. That Aug. 8 protest drew hundreds of thousands of people, the largest crowds since anti-government demonstrations had begun earlier that year.

The crowds had swelled to nearly 500,000 to hear Suu Kyi, then 43, who was only known as the daughter of Burma’s independence hero, Gen. Aung San, and an occasional visitor to the country from Oxford where she was living with her British academic husband and raising a family. Nyo Ohn Myint stood on a side stage and watched Suu Kyi establish her political credentials in Burmese.

That day she emerged ‘’as the person who could lead our country,’’ the former confidant of Suu Kyi said during a telephone interview from the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. ‘’She impressed the crowds and was totally committed to take on the political challenge of dealing with the military regime.’’

Other student activists who were in the vanguard of the 1988 anti-government protests feel likewise about Suu Kyi’s debut on Burma’s political landscape. ‘’She gave people hope with her speech,’’ says Myint Myint San, then a 22-year-old final year botany student at Rangoon University. ‘’She did a tremendous job to help people understand what democracy means. And she dared to speak to the army and confront (then dictator) Gen. Ne Win.’’

In the days that followed, the tapes of her speech were in high demand. ‘’People kept playing it again and again,’’ Myint Myint San told IPS. ‘’People began to talk of Burma getting its second independence after we got our first when the British (colonisers) left (in 1948).’’

It was a dramatic turn of events for a woman who had come home in March 1988 to care of her sick mother and with no thought of political activism on her mind. ‘’When I returned home to Burma in 1988 to nurse my sick mother, I was planning on starting a chain of libraries in my father’s name. A life of politics held no attraction to me,’’ she said in a 1995 interview with ‘Vanity Fair’. ‘’But the people of my country were demanding for democracy, and as my father’s daughter, I felt I had a duty to get involved.’’

Yet, two decades later, the hope for a new Burmese independence -- free of military oppression -- appears remote. The junta remains firmly in control, with a tighter grip on the political landscape than in 1988. And Suu Kyi’s democratic mission has been forced to the margins.

But that has not diminished Suu Kyi’s stature as a democracy icon in the non-violent mould of Mahatma Gandhi. It has come at great personal sacrifice, though, given the over 13 of the past 19 years she has spent under house arrest, and the harsh limits the junta placed on her meetings with supporters and family members.

She was vindicated in 1990 when a new party she led, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won with a huge majority at a parliamentary election that the junta refused to recognise. In 1991 she was awarded the Nobel Peace prize, the first among 40-odd international awards she has won. And in the years since, international attempts to nudge Burma towards political reform have had to turn to the charismatic Suu Kyi -- detained or free-- to ensure credibility and public support.

‘’She has become the rallying point for the democracy movement in Burma. She has contributed tremendously to the growth of democratic culture in the past 20 years,’’ says Aung Naing Oo, a Burmese political analyst living in exile in Thailand. ‘’Her struggle has put Burma’s political problems and its suffering on the world map.’’

Take her out of the picture and the NLD will be nothing, he explains in an interview. ‘’It is also true of the Burmese democracy movement: it is likely to lose its momentum if she is not in the scene.’’

Her two decades in Rangoon have also helped build bridges between the majority Burman community and the South-east Asian country’s many ethnic communities, 17 of which had rebel movements fighting separatist campaigns against the Burmese troops. Leaders of these ethnic communities have confirmed that reconciliation between the majority Burmans and non-Burman minorities is possible through dialogue with Suu Kyi.

They relate to her views of a democratic Burma that she has articulated over the years in her speeches and writings. ‘’When we ask for democracy, all we are asking is that our people should be allowed to live in tranquility, under the rule of law, protected by institutions which will guarantee our rights, the rights that will enable us to maintain our human dignity, to heal the long festering wounds and to allow love and courage to flourish,’’ she is once reported to have said. ‘’Is that such a very unreasonable demand?’’

(END/2008)

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EDITORIAL

Samak's remarks on Burma do more damage

By The Nation
Published on August 27, 2008

The PM adds more salt to the wounds by openly endorsing junta's planned 2010 elections

Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej's recent comments on Burma were ridiculous, even bordering on absurdity. It showed his total ignorance of the situation, and worse yet, he seems to be completely blind to the ongoing efforts by the international community, especially the UN, to bring peace and stability to one of the world's most backward countries. His latest comments added salt to the wound created by his earlier remarks, which also tarnished Thailand's reputation as a democracy.

Samak showed sadistic tendencies when he started criticising the West for demanding that Aung San Suu Kyi be released from her 12-year-long house arrest. He has completely ignored the reality inside Burma, and even very foolishly observed that the West could have a deeper level of discussions with the junta if the opposition party's leader was not part of the scheme. Obviously Samak forgot that Suu Kyi and her party, National League of Democracy, won the 1990 elections by a landslide, but that the military junta refused to recognise their victory.

He also forgot that over the past two decades, the junta has imposed stringent rules over its citizens, building up a tight police state where the public is under constant surveillance. When the Buddhist monks and students took to the streets in September last year to rally against the junta, they were met with force. Asean came out with the strongest statement in its history condemning one of its members, but the junta remained unrepentant.

Now, the junta is moving confidently ahead in imposing its political roadmap on the Burmese people by passing a new constitution in May and planning national elections in 2010. Meanwhile, Samak continues to completely ignore Burma's hunger for democracy.

Thailand has had to support more than two million refugees and migrant workers escaping hardship and oppression in their country. The Thai administration obviously does not realise that making Burma a democracy would be beneficial because the people would want to return home. As the leader of Thailand, Samak should have understood that it is democracy that gave him power in the first place.

However, when he met UN special envoy for Burma Ibrahim Gambari, Samak ended up openly endorsing the junta's planned 2010 election, saying naively that he would talk the junta into allowing outside observers. Samak should have realised that there is no way anybody could influence the junta.

When the international community wanted to help victims of Cyclone Nargis in early May, the junta was recalcitrant. At first, it blocked outside assistance out of fear of intervention, whereas immediate aid could have saved thousands of lives. After repeated assurances by Asean, some international organisations were allowed in. Now, it appears that the junta benefited handsomely from the tricky foreign policy exchange regulations, which enabled the authorities to put millions in their pockets. It is uncertain how much money they have made off with, but the real picture will emerge soon. Already, the news has had an adverse effect on potential sources of assistance.

It is obvious that Samak's stance on Burma will have huge ramifications on Thailand and its standing in the global community. Samak has always been quick to jump on any chance that would help him maintain power, even if it means serving as a front man for a convicted criminal liked Thaksin Shinawatra. Whether or not Samak can continue as prime minister in the weeks ahead, he has already created enough ways to further isolate Thailand. Worse yet, it would further affect the role of the Asean chair over the next 16 months.

With such a strong endorsement of the Burmese junta, it is now possible that some of the Asean dialogue partners would seek to boycott the meetings scheduled in December in Bangkok. Perhaps we should expect more diplomatic disasters if Samak continues as prime minister.

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