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One would not but share UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon’s admiration for the statesmanship displayed by Myanmar's National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi for her recent decision to take the oath of office in parliament in Naypyitaw. She thus dropped her earlier demand that the wording of the oath be changed before she and her other newly elected party members took their seats in the House. Opposed to the country’s constitution of 2008, Suu Kyi had been asking the current dispensation in Myanmar to amend the oath to say that members would ‘respect’ the Constitution rather than ‘safeguard’ it. Finding the government obstinate on the issue, Suu Kyi decided not to insist on it any further. Hailing her decision during his just concluded visit to Myanmar, Ban quipped, ‘Politicians sometimes will continue to have differences of opinion, but real leaders demonstrate flexibility for the greater cause of people and for the country’.
It is clear from what Suu Kyi has said after meeting Ban in Naypyitaw that she would prefer to go in for addressing such ‘technical’ snags when democracy would be fully in place in the country. Of late Myanmar's government has already adopted several progressive measures. These include pardoning of political prisoners, securing a cease-fire with Karen rebels, agreeing to negotiate with other ethnic rebel groups and most importantly, inviting observers from ASEAN, the United States and the European Union to witness the recent by-elections which were held in an orderly, fair, transparent and peaceful manner. Suu Kyi’s present focus would hence be on encouraging this process to move towards having free and fair general elections in 2015, after which a full-fledged democracy could come into being to effect the desired changes in the country’s constitution.
One hopes the current dispensation in Myanmar would appreciate Suu Kyi’s pragmatic political vision and proceed with reforms in the direction of freedom and democracy. In a conversation with Ban some months ago in Bali, President Thein Sein described the road to reforms his government is traversing as ‘so narrow that you cannot turn back’. He has to prove that he means what he has said. Fears are still being voiced in a section of international public opinion that the generals, who still remain most powerful in Myanmar, may not be really inclined to introducing democracy in the country. The present system in Myanmar has 25 per cent of seats reserved in all legislatures for the military. It had freed Suu Kyi only after Myanmar’s junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party manipulated the elections in November 2010 winning about 80 per cent seats in the national parliament and 14 regional assemblies. Myanmar's legislature has 664 seats of which only 43 belong to Suu Kyi’s party at present.
Earlier, in May 1990, bowing to international pressure, Burma’s Military Junta had agreed to elections but when the National League for Democracy led by Suu Kyi won 392 seats and the military backed National Unity Party just 10, the Junta refused to hand over power. Many believe that the Junta may well repeal the elections to be held in 2015 if the results are not favourable. The current dispensation in Myanmar must however allay all such apprehensions and orient its policies more and more in favour of democracy. It would do well to bear in mind that a transition towards democracy is sure to pay the country rich dividends. Many Western nations have already taken steps to ease sanctions on Myanmar in response to its recent political reforms. Recently, European Union countries have agreed to suspend all sanctions, with the exception of an arms embargo for one year. Washington has also announced that it would ease restrictions on investment to Myanmar and no longer bar financial transactions that ‘meet basic human needs or promote democracy’. If Naypyitaw moves ahead with its reforms, the West is likely to further ease sanctions and increase developmental aid to Myanmar.
Besides, pro-democracy policies would lead to further improvement in Myanmar’s relations with democracies like India. Relations between Myanmar and India have improved considerably after New Delhi under Prime Ministers P V Narasimha Rao and Atal Bihari Vajpayee began cultivating ties with Naypyitaw as part of India’s wider foreign policy approach aimed at increasing New Delhi's influence in Southeast Asia. A move towards democracy could further strengthen this relationship.
Also, it would be naïve on the part of the government in Myanmar to repeat history and seek to crush the progressive forces led by Suu Kyi anymore. Daughter of father of modern Burma Aung San, Suu Kyi has come a long way since her party won a massive mandate in the country’s parliamentary elections in 1990 and the junta deprived her of contacts with all near and dear ones, including her children, grandchildren and even her British academic husband who died in 1999 battling cancer. Over the years her Gandhian-Buddhist methodology of political struggle for democracy and human rights has brought her more and more support from across the world — Europe, Australia, North and South America, Israel, Japan, South Korea South Africa, India, Bangladesh, the Maldives, ASEAN – and finally the United Nations General Assembly . Prominent world personalities, including Nobel Peace Laureates the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Shirin Ebadi and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, have also rallied behind her from time to time. Today Suu Kyi is, to quote former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour, ‘an icon of all across the world who believe in the rule of law, human dignity, and governments of, by and for the people’.
Dr Jagdish N Singh is a senior Indian journalist
Views expressed are personal
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