Convention held to gain fellow culprits, says exiled MP

Politics

Convention held to gain fellow culprits, says exiled MP

In response to the question as to why Rangoon has to through all the troubles to organize a costly National Convention, when its apparent intentions to hold on to power as it has been doing for 42 years, an exiled elected representative says the principal object is for it to win as many "guilty parties" as possible.

"In the generals' way of thinking, the more delegates there are, the more will there be culprits for later history," said Daniel Aung, 62, Lahu representative of eastern Shan State's Mongpaing township. "This way, they have people to affix the blame on, if and when things go wrong."

The first National Convention, 1993-96, had 702 delegates, no less than 500 of them appointed by the military, then known as State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). Meanwhile, the second Convention that opened yesterday at Nyaunghnapin, 29 miles north of Rangoon, is boasting 1,088, at least 1,000 of them chosen by the military authorities, prompting Daniel Aung to quip," The original NC had 200 cows stacked against 500 tigers in the same cage. Now they are making it less than a hundred against 1,000 tigers," in reference to a handful of representatives from 10 ceasefire groups that had called for complete overhaul of the principles and procedures adopted during the first convention.

Sao Sengsuk, 69, member of the exiled Ethnic Nationalities Council, that has been pushing for a tripartite dialogue, and former Commander-in-Chief of the Shan State Army, saw it differently.

"To myself, it means the disease that was transferred from the late Gen Ne Win to today's generals has reached the point of no return."

The grizzled politician, whose late father was a signatory of the Panglong Agreement that had merged "Ministerial Burma" and "Frontier Areas" together in 1947, elaborated:

Ne Win, according to him, was one of Burma's pre-war politicians whose ideas were deeply rooted in the Nazi and Fascist ideologies. "All of us know these are anachronisms," he said. "But not so to these generals, who, though they eventually ditched him out, continue nevertheless to hang on to his strategic aims, which, to my knowledge, were

• Burma must be a unitary state
• Burmans must be the ruling race
• All powers to the military

"The hold of these outmoded creeds on them is such there is no room in them for 'newfangled' ideas like democracy and federalism. Now the world is beginning to learn like we once were that expecting a spontaneous change from Rangoon is hopeless," he concluded.

He declares dialogue will remain the cornerstone of the ENC and asks that the international community, especially Burma's neighbors, seriously consider the demands of the National League for Democracy, United Nationalities Alliance and the ceasefire groups.

The ENC, chaired by Saw Ba Thin, President of the Karen National Union, is the off-shoot of the Ethnic Nationalities Solidarity and Cooperation Committee, that was formed by the National Democratic Front, United Nationalities League for Democracy-Liberated Area and Karenni National Progress Party in 2001 "to coordinate efforts by the ethnic nationalities inside and outside Burma to achieve a Tripartite Dialogue as called by the UN."

Number of delegates attending the National Convention – a breakdown by groups