ASEAN urged to unite against Yangon
Ivy Susanti, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The road to democracy may be a fraught one, but for Myanmar's pro-democracy activists, it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
In the past 15 years, Myanmar's pro-democracy movement has been preparing for the time when the military finally decides to call it a day, including the sharing of power between more than 100 ethnic groups, the form of government and the constitution, which is more or less based on the Western concept of a democracy, said Myanmarese activists Daw San San and Khin Ohmar.
The latest move came on Feb. 12, 2005, when 41 organizations representing major ethnic groups signed an agreement on the principles that would provide the foundations for the new government.
"Within our democratic movement, the ethnic leaders, the youths and women were able to come together, and helped shape the vision of a future Burma. We agreed to form a coalition called the democratic federal union of Burma.
"Only recently, we came up with eight principles for the future constitution," Ohmar said without elaborating.
She added that this year's agreement was based on a number of previous agreements. The first formal agreement was signed in 1996. "These are all on how we will shape the federal union, how we're going to share the resources and how we're going to share the power."
"It's not true that without the Army, the Union of Burma will collapse. There has never been any ethnic conflict at the community level. The ethnic groups are resentful of the system and the Army's human rights violations," said Ohmar.
She admitted that the military government had entered an agreement with 17 armed groups recently, but said that this was merely an effort to shut them up and remove them from the political equation.
San San, 73, is the secretary of Aung San Suu Kyi's Members of Parliament Union (MPU). In July 2003, she left Myanmar for fear of being arrested. She is now based in Mae Sot, Thailand.
Ohmar is the coordinator of the Peacebuilding and Reconciliation Program of the Women's League of Burma (WLB) and Policy Forum member of the Forum for Democracy in Burma (FDB), also based in Thailand.
The two were testifying before the House of Representatives' Commission I on Tuesday evening. Though they were the first foreigners to testify before the House, they elicited little attention as only three out of the 46 commission members attended the meeting.
"We felt very encouraged (by the Indonesia's legislators attention) ... They are elected representatives, I'm sure the government will pay serious attention to the legislators," Ohmar said.
Some legislators from Indonesia are members of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Caucus for Burma. The Caucus is a loose grouping of legislators from Malaysia, Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The activists are due to visit other caucus members in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand as part of their campaign to raise awareness among Southeast Asian legislators and people to help put pressure on the Myanmar government to give democracy a chance.
The Myanmar government outlined a "road map" to democracy in August 2003 in response to international condemnation of the detention of Suu Kyi and the lack of democratic reform by the isolated regime.
San San and Ohmar said they wished that ASEAN government would reach a consensus on Myanmar's chairmanship of ASEAN in 2006. "There is no visible reform in Burma," San San said.
"The key is ASEAN," Ohmar added. "ASEAN wants to see a gradual change, but the problem with Burma is they constantly buy time from neighbors and the international community. So as to make sure they can really hold on to power."
"Myanmar is not a civil society and the people have little or no opportunities for economic development. Without intervention, how Burma move toward change, albeit gradually?"