Exerpts from Maung Zarni, LSE, WAKE UP BURMESE -

Quote: The regime is finding out that the charade of multi-party elections
and all the expertly spun talk of a “post-election landscape” have not
brought them closer to international acceptability. To be sure, the
generals have found no shortage of “friends,” strategic allies,
co-exploiters of resources, investors and business partners among
Asian rulers, from Beijing and Delhi, to Bangkok and Singapore. But
the regime has been unable to dilute the world’s perception of it as a
despicable pariah, and Washington’s dogged refusal to relax its
opposition against key international lenders and development banks
such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and its Asian
offshoot, the Tokyo-dominated Asian Development Bank. This dampens
even the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) enthusiasm to
let Burma’s not-so-presentable generals chair its overly ambitious,
business-oriented bloc, lest Naypyidaw drives potential investors away
from the ASEAN region, in fierce competition for capital and
investment inflows with China, India and other international rivals.

Last but not least, the generals have been on a mission to militarily
subjugate politically defiant ethnic communities such as the Shan,
Kachin, Karen, Mon and so on. The Burmese military’s zero-sum policy
towards any of its critics, non-violent or armed, has already
backfired, as it has predictably resulted in the complete breakdown of
a 17-year ceasefire with the Kachin. The fact that the regime invited
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi “as an individual observer” to the “poverty
workshop” can only be seen as a cynical public relations ploy, part of
the generals’ “pacification campaign”.

. . .

What the late Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme remarked truthfully
about the apartheid in Mandela’s South Africa – that apartheid cannot
be reformed, but it must be dismantled – equally applies to Burma
under half-century of military dictatorship. The generals’ class rule
in Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s Burma cannot be reformed through talk of
poverty and talks of ‘the Talk’. The Burmese electorate gave Daw Suu
and her hundreds of NLD colleagues their overwhelming support in the
ballots two decades ago in order to specifically help end the military
dictatorship and usher in a new era of “government of, for and by the
people” – and not simply to play the game of dialogue and engage in
the talk of poverty over fancy meals in Naypyidaw

. . .

Ultimately, politics is about power—power to reform politically
repressive institutions and economically dysfunctional structures, as
well as, and above all, the military which created (it).


My foregone conclusion is that there is absolutely no plan among the generals to
share power with other popular stakeholders of Burma such as Aung San
Suu Kyi and ethnic minority leaders.