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Caricature elections in Burma
by Thanos Kalamidas
2010-11-08 09:09:42 |
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The people of Burma might have voted for the first time after twenty years but that doesn’t mean that Burma has returned to democracy or that the vote went freely to the ones the people wanted to represent them. After all nothing has change to Burma and nothing will change as long the countries is forced to wear a military uniform and be called Myanmar.
The same time the leader of the only party that opposes the dictators of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi is still imprisoned in her own house with no access to her friends, party and the people of Burma. So how these elections can be democratic remains a mystery. The demonstrations are forbidden and the participation to demonstrations that will express any kind of opposition to the military dictators will be dealt as treason to the country and all the arrested will be dealt accordingly; again what all these have in any sense anything to do with democracy it remains a mystery.
But I have written about it before, elections often become dictator’s alibi and somehow their catharsis in the eyes of the ones they usually target. The same thing happened last year with Zimbabwe, Mugabe called for elections and as a result the opposition party and Zimbabwe only hope for democracy found itself in a partnership with Mugabe. A partnership where Mugabe has everything and the opposition the titles of governing a country in the edge of total catastrophe, economic and social. The mistake the Zimbabwean opposition did was to participate in this masquerade and as I mentioned before become Mugabe’s alibi to continue his crimes instead of following the natural way planed for him that led behind prison bars.
At least Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, National League for Democracy didn’t do the same mistake and simply boycotted the elections. Whatever the result – and under the fear and the shadow of the dictators the result is more than obvious - the dictators can say now that they are doing changes leading to a democracy and most of all they can keep happy China, their only ally international that started feeling more and more the international pressure to do something about the Chinese friendly dictators of Burma.
By the way that the dictators of Myanmar even though allies of China have absolutely nothing to do with communism or at least the way the contemporary Chinese leadership understands communism. They are a gang of murderous drug dealers and nothing more or less. Burma is a country from another era, when great powers like USA, USSR and China used to have satellites, sphere of influence and now we are getting to a new era with more independent democracies and the dictators of Myanmar feel the necessity of this change. The caricature elections serve exactly this and I insist they happen under the pressure of the Chinese government who feel that an ally has turned into a thorn. The bloodthirsty dictators would have never done this move if they hadn’t felt the presume of their Chinese ally and their only hope for survival.
And there is one ore thing, North Korea for example is the other country that belongs to the Chinese sphere but North Korea to a certain point can strand alone and has done so for five decades, under the circumstances Myanmar has no chance at all. The same time and as I pointed above Aung San Suu Kyi and her party’s decision to boycott the elections was a very wise decision and it will so more in the future probably the near future for the rest of us what remains is to wait for the day the dictators will find their way to the prison cells and hope that this will happen soon.
Ovi+politics Burma Thanos_Kalamidas Ovi |
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