Deep in the heart of remote new capital Naypyidaw Burma, a most unusual event took place on the morning of January 31. Most legislators then 600 gathered in a room of sumptuous, Palace as well as for the first parliamentary session of the country in 22 years. Technically, almost five decades of military regime in Burma had been completed.
But if historic rally gives the illusion of a new political era in a country governed by army since 1962, the reality is quite different. "New bottle, same wine," joked Win Tin, an opposition politician veteran whose popular National League for democracy (NLD) has no seats in the new Parliament because it has boycotted elections last November. "It's the same men armed support." Everyone knows that convene a Parliament and say there is a transition to civilian rule is absurd. We know where the real power lies. »
Indeed, although the military junta has boasted about configuring Burma on a path to what he called a thriving democracy discipline, regulations governing the session legislative milestone showed how isolated and repressive Burmese are still. Foreign journalists were prevented from attending the event. Introduced in January parliamentary legislation restricting freedom of information. One rule, for example, says that any m.p. non - who undertakes in the building without prior approval of the Parliament can be imprisoned for a year. Legislators themselves are not allowed to bring electronic equipment including mobile phones, cameras or recording devices in Parliament. Neither can they ask a question without going through a dark process that takes more than a week. The oddly specific time of the opening of Parliament — 8: 00 pm - was widely regarded as a gesture by the members of the junta astrologiquement obsessed to secure the most suitable time to inaugurate their self-portraits body.
At first glance, recent months have brought this that resemble changes in topography politics of Burma. November 7, the country held its first election in two decades, allowing an entire generation of young Burmese people vote for the first time. Six days after polls, Nobel Prize for peace in chemistry and the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was released over seven years of residency. The NLD, Suu Kyi founded, won a landslide in polls of the country in 1990, but the junta results, ignored and locked place for most of the intermediaries of the last two decades.
But three months after the events of watersheds in November, Burma feel essentially unchanged. Although Suu Kyi NLD proudly opened its Web site the same day that the Parliament held its first session, the party is no longer a legal political force. Many legislators now sitting in Parliament incredibly large building Naypyidaw are hardly the public's choice. Because of likely voter of intimidation and shenanigans urn assumed the back-to-back on the junta Union solidarity and Development Party (USDP) won about 80% of the November vote. Its elected representatives in Parliament include buddies of business of the junta and the agents who recently retired from the army participate in what is officially supposed to be a civil process.
Opposition parties who has dared to participate in surveys, including a series of ethnically based parties and breakaway NLD National Democratic Force (NDF), won fewer seats that international observers believe that they should be. With a quarter of parliamentary seats designated for appointees by the military power of the opposition in Parliament is derisory. Add to that the fact that top management positions are reserved for people with military backgrounds, and Win Tin new bottle same formulation wine makes perfect sense. (See Suu Kyi in the top 10 political prisoners of time).
One of the first tasks of the Parliament in the coming days will be to select the new President. It is rampant speculation about whether if current leader of the junta Than Shwe, an elderly former employee of mail and specialist Psy - Ops want to position or whether if it will prefer to keep the position of Commander in Chief of Burma. (By law a person cannot hold both titles.) Another candidate for the Presidency can be Thura Shwe Mann, a seasoned executive is famous for his loyalty to Than Shwe and his brutal campaign against ethnic Karen rebel. In both cases, the President will become a large part of the control of Parliament, most of the time cannot legally challenge.
A few days before Parliament meets, Burma's Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the NLD have political party recognized as a legal entity. Because the NLD decided to boycott polls in November, he rightly believed would be neither free nor fair, the party was ordered disbanded by the electoral commission in Burma in September. NLD elder spoke of reengineering of the party as an engine political shade or as a force of civil society. But two paths are untested.
Landscape policy with only minimal presence of the opposition in Parliament and a totally absent NLD sounds like a scenario dark for democratic progress in Burma. Lack of interest that many Burmese have shown in the elections and the convening of the new Parliament shows removed how they feel that their lives are Burmese political Parliament. Approximately one third of the Burmese living below the poverty line. no Parliament that will change in the near future.
Nevertheless, change, if only at a glacial pace, may still be. While many Western countries maintain on economic sanctions regime, an influx of investment from neighbouring Asian countries brought a flood of money in Burma's natural resources sector. This month, Burma has unveiled a special economic Zone law although what exactly this means is not yet clear. Most of this money has finished- and will probably continue to finish - General or their cronies company pockets. Still, more foreign investment could make life better for some Burmese, if only because of better telecommunications, improving roads and subordinate jobs even associated foreign projects. (Course, the Burmese army also showed little qualms using forced labour and farmers forcings off the coast of their lands, with little compensation for room for future projects).
"Change in Burma will come through the politics and economics, also" said Kyaw Win, Burmese political analyst in Rangoon, ancient capital and major city in the country. "But you have to be patient." Unfortunately, it is a quality Burmese, who witnessed the slow devolution of their homeland for nearly five decades, possess in large quantities.
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