Art of the possible in Myanmar

Robert H. Taylor The Straits Times Asia News Network Singapore

Myanmar's national convention to agree on guidelines for a new Constitution reconvened just over a month ago, again without any current members from the National League for Democracy (NLD) in attendance.

The NLD leadership refused to participate because of the unwillingness of the army government, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), to permit the opening of NLD offices and to release from house arrest its secretary-general Aung San Suu Kyi and vice-chairman U Tin Oo. The result was predictable.

The United States and other Western governments immediately condemned the convention as a sham and once more demanded the immediate release of Suu Kyi. The U.S. has just renewed its sanctions regime with President George W. Bush declaring that Myanmar remains an "extraordinary threat" to it. The European Union threatens to scupper the forthcoming summit of the Asia- Europe Meeting in Hanoi because of the row.

Others were more accepting of the convention process. Russia, for example, issued a particularly cordial response. Clearly, the international divide between those who demand that the SPDC step down from power, and those who see the SPDC as part of any solution to Myanmar's current economic and political dilemmas, has not lessened as a result of the convening of the convention.

Similarly, the different emphases that Myanmar's Asean partners express in their public and private statements on the convention reveal differences in their appreciations of what is necessary for the country to achieve constitutional government.

India and China, characteristically, have been reticent to comment on Myanmar's internal affairs. Whether the new Indian government will continue to follow the line of its predecessors remains to be seen. Earlier Congress governments were much less willing to cooperate with the SPDC than the outgoing regime. Nonetheless, India's economic and strategic imperatives will remain the same regardless of who is in power in Delhi or Yangon.

The reconvened convention has approximately 300 more delegates attending than it had when it was adjourned in 1996. The more than 1,000 people present are divided into various categories such as representatives-elect from the 1990 elections, those nominated by political parties, peasants, workers, intellectuals and service personnel.

The 300 new participants are largely representatives from the ethnic minority "peace groups" which have emerged in the new political environment that has been created as a result of the ceasefire agreements reached with the country's many former insurgent militias.

It is a remarkable list which includes groups from the various "special regions" of the former Wa, Kachin and Kokang troops of the old Burma Communist Party as well as organizations such as the Shan State National Army, the Burma Communist Party (Rahkine Group), the New Mon State Party, the Kayinni National Progressive Party and various other splinter organizations.

Whether the NLD has made the correct political decision in standing up for its democratic principles and ignoring what the convention represents to those who are attending remains to be seen. The reiteration of the army's insistence that the head of state be someone with military understanding and no connections to foreign interests, and that the army have a leadership role in the state, is clearly hard for principled democrats to accept.

But is a constitutional convention an effort to write an allegedly principled democratic Constitution or part of a political process to begin to open up new opportunities for previously excluded groups and individuals to begin to share power with the present regime?

Clearly, for the new groups who have abandoned warfare and sought various modus vivendi with the army government, their participation in the constitutional process is worth the compromises they have had to make in terms of their many previous statements not to abandon their earlier militant postures.

The eventual results of the constitutional convention are far from clear. What does seem apparent is a desire by the military government to maintain the peace and stability that has been created in areas of the country previously contested by insurgent groups, as well as to see the emergence of a new constitutional order 16 years after taking power from the old socialist regime.

Now the ethnic minorities and other groups represented at the convention are in a position to see that some of their interests are protected in exchange for support for the constitutional process which started last August when Prime Minister Khin Nyunt announced the seven-step roadmap for democracy in Myanmar.

At various points in Myanmar's history, political organizations stood up for their principles and refused to join in what they saw as flawed political processes. They were subsequently excluded from any role in or influence over the government. The current constitutional convention, with its emphasis on "discipline flourishing democracy" and constraining rules of procedure, may not be perfect, but it is the only political process in Myanmar at this time.

As other countries in Southeast Asia and elsewhere have demonstrated, the first step on the road to constitutional democracy is the most difficult. Whether its critics, who state that it is not yet that step, are correct, is contested. Those who believe that politics is the art of the possible may see the convention in a more positive light, flaws and all.

The writer is an associate senior fellow of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.