A nearly unanimous Western world has heaped praise on President Thein Sein's supposed moves towards "democratic reform" and "national reconciliation". But what has actually changed and what's behind the hype?
In near unison, the international community condemned the Myanmar regime for its brutal repression of Buddhist monk-led pro-democracy protests in 2007, its initial callous response to the Cyclone Nargis disaster in 2008 - when a widely condemned sham referendum on a new constitution was held in the killer storm's wake - and a blatantly rigged general election swept by military-backed candidates in November 2010.
One theory goes that the administration is locked in a power struggle between military "hardliners" and "reformers", and that the latter, at least for now, have the upper hand. Several Western countries have apparently taken the policy decision that every effort should therefore be made to support the "reformers" and recent reform signals to ensure that Myanmar doesn't return to its old repressive ways.
The EU and US have expressed public views to that effect. On January 31, EU president Herman Van Rompuy said in a statement after a summit in Brussels: "I welcome the important changes taking place in Burma/Myanmar and encourage its government to maintain its determination to continue on the path of reform." The US State Department said the day before that it was "encouraged " by Myanmar's recent reforms, "including its decision to allow opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to run in upcoming elections".
Others, however, suspect that the signs emerging from Myanmar's leadership reflects a well-orchestrated "good cop, bad-cop" routine to neutralize domestic opposition and win new foreign allies, especially among former critics in the West. Either way, Thein Sein's regime has so far skillfully played its cards in a way that few, probably even among themselves, could have foreseen. "Those in power are military men, not representatives of a democratic government. This is how they work," says a Myanmar national who has followed political developments for decades.
Well laid plans
In order to understand Myanmar's policy shift - and why the West has been so supportive - it is instructive to look back to the early 2000s. Then condemned and pressured by the international community, the ruling military junta announced in August 2003 a seven-step "Roadmap to Discipline-Flourishing Democracy." That plan called for the drafting of a new constitution, general elections, and convention of a new parliament which would "elect state leaders" charged with building "a modern, developed and democratic nation".
The "roadmap" was made public, but at the same time a confidential "master plan" which outlined ways and means to deal with both the international community, especially the US, and domestic opposition was also drawn up. The authors of that plan are not known but an internal military document written by Lt Col Aung Kyaw Hla, who is identified as a researcher at the country's prestigious Defense Services Academy, was completed and circulated in 2004.
The Burmese-language document, received and reviewed by this writer, outlines the thinking and strategy behind the master plan. It is, however, unclear whether "Aung Kyaw Hla" is a particular person, or a codename used by a military think-tank. Anecdotal evidence suggests the latter.
Entitled "A Study of Myanmar-US Relations", the main thesis of the 346-page dossier is that Myanmar's recent reliance on China as a diplomatic ally and economic patron has created a "national emergency" which threatens the country's independence.
According to the dossier, Myanmar must normalize relations with the West after implementing the roadmap and electing a government so that the regime can deal with the outside world on more acceptable terms. Evidently the internal thinking was that normalization with the West would not be possible as long as Myanmar was ruled by military juntas.
Aung Kyaw Hla goes on to argue in the master plan that although human rights are a concern in the West, the US would be willing to modify its policy to suit "strategic interests". Although the author does not specify those interests, it is clear from the thesis that he is thinking of common ground with the US vis-a-vis China. The author cites Vietnam and Indonesia under former dictator Suharto as examples of US foreign policy flexibility in weighing strategic interests against democratization.
If bilateral relations with the US were improved, the master plan suggests, Myanmar would also get access to badly needed funds from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other global financial institutions. The country would then emerge from "regionalism", where it currently depends on the goodwill and trade of its immediate neighbors, including China, and enter a new era of "globalization".
The master plan is acutely aware of the problems that must be addressed before Myanmar can lessen its reliance on China and become a trusted partner with the West. The main issue at the time of writing was the detention of pro-democracy icon Suu Kyi, who Aung Kyaw Hla wrote was a key "focal point": "Whenever she is under detention pressure increases, but when she is not, there is less pressure." While the report implies Suu Kyi's release would improve ties with the West, the plan's ultimate aim - which it spells out clearly - is to "crush" the opposition.
At the same time, the dossier identifies individuals, mostly Western academics, known for their opposition to the West's sanctions policy, and somewhat curiously suggests that "friendly" Indian diplomats could be helpful in providing background information about influential US congressmen.
The dossier concludes that the regime cannot compete with the media and non-governmental organizations run by Myanmar exiles, but if US politicians and lawmakers were invited to visit the country they could help to sway international opinion in the regime's favor. Over the years, many Americans have visited Myanmar and often left less critical of the regime than they were previously. In the end, it seems that Myanmar has successfully managed to engage the US rather than vice versa.
Institutional Sinophobia
The "roadmap" was made public, but at the same time a confidential "master plan" which outlined ways and means to deal with both the international community, especially the US, and domestic opposition was also drawn up. The authors of that plan are not known but an internal military document written by Lt Col Aung Kyaw Hla, who is identified as a researcher at the country's prestigious Defense Services Academy, was completed and circulated in 2004.
The Burmese-language document, received and reviewed by this writer, outlines the thinking and strategy behind the master plan. It is, however, unclear whether "Aung Kyaw Hla" is a particular person, or a codename used by a military think-tank. Anecdotal evidence suggests the latter.
Entitled "A Study of Myanmar-US Relations", the main thesis of the 346-page dossier is that Myanmar's recent reliance on China as a diplomatic ally and economic patron has created a "national emergency" which threatens the country's independence.
According to the dossier, Myanmar must normalize relations with the West after implementing the roadmap and electing a government so that the regime can deal with the outside world on more acceptable terms. Evidently the internal thinking was that normalization with the West would not be possible as long as Myanmar was ruled by military juntas.
Aung Kyaw Hla goes on to argue in the master plan that although human rights are a concern in the West, the US would be willing to modify its policy to suit "strategic interests". Although the author does not specify those interests, it is clear from the thesis that he is thinking of common ground with the US vis-a-vis China. The author cites Vietnam and Indonesia under former dictator Suharto as examples of US foreign policy flexibility in weighing strategic interests against democratization.
If bilateral relations with the US were improved, the master plan suggests, Myanmar would also get access to badly needed funds from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other global financial institutions. The country would then emerge from "regionalism", where it currently depends on the goodwill and trade of its immediate neighbors, including China, and enter a new era of "globalization".
The master plan is acutely aware of the problems that must be addressed before Myanmar can lessen its reliance on China and become a trusted partner with the West. The main issue at the time of writing was the detention of pro-democracy icon Suu Kyi, who Aung Kyaw Hla wrote was a key "focal point": "Whenever she is under detention pressure increases, but when she is not, there is less pressure." While the report implies Suu Kyi's release would improve ties with the West, the plan's ultimate aim - which it spells out clearly - is to "crush" the opposition.
At the same time, the dossier identifies individuals, mostly Western academics, known for their opposition to the West's sanctions policy, and somewhat curiously suggests that "friendly" Indian diplomats could be helpful in providing background information about influential US congressmen.
The dossier concludes that the regime cannot compete with the media and non-governmental organizations run by Myanmar exiles, but if US politicians and lawmakers were invited to visit the country they could help to sway international opinion in the regime's favor. Over the years, many Americans have visited Myanmar and often left less critical of the regime than they were previously. In the end, it seems that Myanmar has successfully managed to engage the US rather than vice versa.
Institutional Sinophobia
Aung Kaw Hla's internal thesis is the first clear sign of dissatisfaction with the regime's close ties with China, which, in part, were forged because the West downgraded its relations with Myanmar after massacres of pro-democracy demonstrators in 1988 and other gross human-rights violations. More signs of a worsening relationship could be discerned in internal reports that began to circulate within the military in 2010.
China, until then praised as a dependable ally, was beginning to be viewed increasingly as the root of Myanmar's many ills, from the rape of the country's forests to rampant drug trafficking. China's close ties with the United Wa State Army, Myanmar's main drug-trafficking militia, has not go unnoticed by the authorities in Naypyidaw. Then, in September 2011, came Thein Sein's decision to suspend the China-backed US$3.6 billion joint-venture Myitsone dam project in the far north of the country.
Seen from a US perspective, encouraging Myanmar to move away from China became a priority when Naypyidaw showed that it was willing to engage with the US. Washington was also eager to undermine Myanmar's disturbing military ties with North Korea. Not surprisingly, North Korea was high on the agenda when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Myanmar last December.
The last of several recorded attempts to ship weaponry from North Korea to Myanmar took place in May and June 2011, several months after the supposedly "reformist" Thein Sein became president and after government officials had claimed that there was no military cooperation with North Korea.
On May 26, the USS McCampbell caught up with M/V Light, a Myanmar-bound North Korean cargo vessel suspected of carrying missile parts and possibly other military equipment. The US destroyer approached the ship and asked to board but the North Koreans refused. The first encounter took place in the sea south of Shanghai and a few days later closer to Singapore. The M/V Light eventually stopped and turned back to its home port in North Korea - all the way tracked by US surveillance planes and satellites.
After that incident - and incentives from the US such as easing restrictions on Naypyidaw's access to multilateral lending institutions - there has been no known attempt by North Korea to ship weapons to Myanmar. And the US is no doubt taking full advantage of Myanmar's drift away from China. "What the US is trying to do is to send every signal of support to the forces pushing for liberalization in Burma," said Robert Fitts, a former US diplomat in the region now attached to Thailand's Chulalongkorn university.
The US will soon send a new ambassador to Myanmar, representing an upgrade of diplomatic relations. On February 7, the New York Times quoted US officials as saying that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), David Petraeus, may visit Myanmar later this year. The CIA is not exactly known for being a leading proponent and promoter of liberal values in the developing world; the agency has other priorities such as Myanmar's strategic importance to the US.
But therein lies a danger, which Aung Kyaw Hla outlined in his thesis of more than seven years ago. If Myanmar does manage to improve bilateral relations with the US, China could counteract in a way that threatens Myanmar's integrity and independence. A balanced approach is therefore needed, Aung Kyaw Hla argued, but it was not set out in the master plan how that balance may be achieved.
Well-worn routine
There are other reasons to doubt that Myanmar's new policies will work over the long term. While the international community appears to fall for the latest incarnation of the regime's well-worn good cop, bad cop routine, local and exiled mainstream opposition groups are less likely to be so gullible.
One of the supposed "good cops" in Myanmar's current nominally civilian leadership is former Maj Gen Aung Min, currently the railway minister, who has been tasked with shuttling back and forth between Myanmar and Thailand to meet with influential exiled dissidents. Some of those who have recently met him are deeply suspicious of his motives and the less conciliatory signals sent from the regime's "bad cops".
They note that Aung Min once served under Tin U, Myanmar's powerful intelligence chief until he was ousted in 1983, ostensibly for corrupt practices but more likely because he had built up a state within a state that threatened the leadership of former junta leader Gen Ne Win.
Writing in the Far Eastern Economic Review in 1983, British journalist Rodney Tasker characterized Tin U and his intelligence colleagues as "men of the world compared with other more short-sighted, dogmatic figures in the Burmese [Myanmar] leadership. They were allowed to travel abroad, talk freely to foreigners and generally look behind the rigid confines of the current regime."
But they were also known to be ruthless and extremely skilled at manipulating their enemies and adversaries. Tin U himself was trained by the CIA on the US-held Pacific island of Saipan in 1957. Aung Min somehow survived the 1983 purge and moved to join Myanmar's Intelligence Battalion 21 in 1992. He was with the 66th Light Infantry Division in 2000, was elevated to Southern Commander of the Myanmar Army in 2001, and became railway minister in 2003 under the previous military junta led by Gen Than Shwe.
In today's context, solving the long-burning ethnic issue will be key to realizing the master plan's ultimate vision of keeping the military in power. One of the supposed "bad cops" in the current power configuration is Aung Thaung, another peace negotiator, who met ethnic Kachin rebel leaders in Ruili in southwestern China earlier this year. A former heavy industry minister, he is believed by many to have been one of the architects behind a 2003 mob attack on Suu Kyi and her colleagues in Depayin that left scores of her supporters dead and wounded. "The good cop" Aung Min did not attend the talks in Ruili but some analysts suggest may later step in to "rescue" the talks with a softer approach.
Whether Myanmar's many rebellious ethnic minorities will accept these well-known personalities and well-worn negotiating tactics remains to be seen. The fact that the government has consistently refused to even consider a federal structure does not bode well for reaching lasting agreements with armed groups. The 2008 constitution lays down the fundamentals for a centralized state structure where the military is a main, if not dominant, player.
Thus the recent euphoria over recent "reforms" in Myanmar may therefore be short-lived. Unless the present constitution is scrapped or widely amended, which is extremely unlikely due to the military's de facto veto power in parliament, Myanmar's ethnic issue will likely remain unsolved. And if the country becomes an arena of competition between the US and China, there will certainly be more trouble ahead - as Aung Kyaw Hla warned in his master plan now being put into practice.
Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and author of several books on Burma/Myanmar, including Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Struggle for Democracy (Published in 2011). He is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific Media Services.
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ျမန္မာအစိုးရရဲ့ လွ်ိဳ႔ဝွက္ စီမံကိန္း-ဘာေတးလ္ လစ္တနာ
ေအးရွတိုင္းမွာ ၂၀၁၂ ခုႏွစ္ ေဖေဖာ္ဝါရီလ ၉ ရက္ေန႔ကေဖာ္ျပခဲ့တဲ့ေဆာင္းပါးကို ဘာသာျပန္ထားတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာအစိုးရရဲ့ လွ်ိဳ႔ဝွက္ စီမံကိန္း-ဘာေတးလ္ လစ္တနာ
ေအးရွတိုင္းမွာ ၂၀၁၂ ခုႏွစ္ ေဖေဖာ္ဝါရီလ ၉ ရက္ေန႔ကေဖာ္ျပခဲ့တဲ့ေဆာင္းပါးကို ဘာသာျပန္ထားတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာ ႏိုင္ငံရဲ့ လက္ရွိ အစိုးရနဲ႔ အရင္အစိုးရတို႔ရဲ့ အလြန္ဆိုးဝါးတဲ့ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ခ်ဳိးေဖာက္မႈ မွတ္တမ္းေတြ အေပၚမွာ ႏိုင္ငံတကာက ေဝဖန္ျပစ္တင္တာေတြ ရပ္တန္႔သြားျပီး ခုခ်ိန္မွာ ျမန္မာအစိုးရအတြက္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ မိတ္ေဆြေတြ တိုးပြားေနပါတယ္။ အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရနဲ႔ ဥေရာပ သမဂၢ အတြင္းက ရန္သူေဟာင္းေတြကလည္း အခု အခါ စီးပြားေရးပိတ္ဆို႔မႈေတြ ရုပ္သိမ္းသူက ရုပ္သိမ္းၾကသလို၊ တခ်ဳိ႔ကလည္း ရုပ္သိမ္းဖို႔ ျပင္ေနၾကျပီ။ ႏုိင္ငံေပါင္းစုံ ျဖန္႔က်က္လုပ္ကိုင္ေနၾကတဲ့ ကုမၸဏီၾကီးေတြကလည္း အာရွမွာ ေနာက္ဆုံး ရင္းႏွီးျမဳပ္ႏွံရာ ျမန္မာစားက်က္ေျမၾကီးထဲကို ေျခစုံပစ္ဝင္လိုက္ဖို႔ရာ ေျခလွမ္းတျပင္ျပင္ ျဖစ္ေနျပီ။
သမၼတ သိန္းစိန္ရဲ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရး ေျခလွမ္းေတြဆိုတာနဲ႔ အမ်ိဳးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရး ဆုိတာကို အေနာက္ကမၻာ တခုလုံးက ကန္႔ကြက္သူ မရွိသေလာက္နီးနီး ခ်ီးမြမ္းၾသဘာေပးေနၾကတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ တကယ္တန္းဘာေတြ ေျပာင္းပါသလဲ။ အဲဒီအေျပာင္းအလဲဆိုတဲ့ အေျပာေတြရဲ့ ေနာက္ကြယ္မွာ ဘာေတြ ရွိေနသလဲ။
ဗုဒၶဘာသာ ဘုန္းေတာ္ၾကီးေတြ ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ ၂၀၀၇ ခုႏွစ္ ဆႏၵျပပြဲေတြ အေပၚမွာ ရက္ရက္စက္စက္ ႏွိမ္နင္းျဖဳိခြဲခဲ့တာ ေတြ၊ ၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္ အေစာပိုင္းတုန္းက ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့တဲ့ နာဂစ္ ေဘးဆိုးကာလၾကီးရဲ့ အစပိုင္းမွာ အၾကင္နာကင္းမဲ့ ရက္စက္တဲ့ တုန္႔ျပန္ပုံေတြ၊ ဒီလူသတ္မုန္တိုင္းၾကီး ျဖစ္ျပီးကာစမွာပဲ အေျခခံဥပေဒသစ္နဲ႔ ပတ္သက္တဲ့ အတုအေယာင္္ ဆႏၵခံယူပြဲဲၾကီးက်င္းပခဲ့လို႔ အမ်ားကဝိုင္းဝန္း ရွဳတ္ခ် ျပစ္တင္ခံရတာေတြ၊ ၂၀၁၀ ႏိုဝင္ဘာမွာ လုပ္တဲ့ အေထြေထြေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ ေျပာင္ေျပာင္တင္းတင္း မဲခိုး မဲညစ္ျပီး စစ္တပ္ေက်ာေထာက္ေနာက္ခံ ၾကံ့ဖြံ႔ေတြက မဲေတြ သိမ္းၾကံဳးလုယူသြားတာေတြကို မၾကာေသးခင္ကာလကေလးမွာပဲ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ အသိုင္းအဝိုင္းက ဝိုင္းဝန္းရွဳတ္ခ်အျပစ္တင္ခဲ့ၾကပါေသးတယ္။
အခုေခတ္စားေနတဲ့ သီအိုရီ တခုအရ အစိုးရအဖြဲ႔အတြင္းမွာ ေခါင္းမာသူေတြနဲ႔ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲလိုသူေတြ အာဏာလြန္ဆြဲေနၾကတယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ ခုေလာေလာဆယ္အထိေတာ့ ျပဳျပင္လိုသူေတြက အသာစီးရေနေသးတယ္လို႔လည္း ဆိုၾကေလရဲ့။ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံ ေတာ္ေတာ္ မ်ားမ်ားက ဘာပဲလုပ္လုပ္ သူတို႔ လုပ္တဲ့ အလုပ္တိုင္းဟာ ျပဳျပင္လိုသူေတြကို ေထာက္ခံအားေပးရာေရာက္ဖို႔ နဲ႔ ေလာေလာဆယ္ ျဖစ္ေပၚေနတဲ့ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲမႈေတြ ေနာက္ျပန္ဆုတ္မသြားဖို႔ ဆိုတဲ့ အခ်က္ အေပၚမွာ ေပၚလစီခ် ေဆာင္ရြက္ေန ၾကတာကလည္း အထင္အရွားပါပဲ။
ဥေရာပ သမဂၢနဲ႔ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုတို႔ဟာ ဒီသေဘာထားကို လူသိရွင္ၾကားထုတ္ေဖာ္ ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အီးယူ ဥေရာပ သမဂၢ ဥကၠဌ ဟားမန္း ဗန္ ရြန္းပါ က ဘရပ္ဆဲလ္ ထိပ္သီး အစည္းအေဝးမွာ ေၾကညာ ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ရာမွာ “ ျမန္မာအစိုးရရဲ့ အေရးပါတဲ့ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္း လဲမႈေတြကို ၾကိဳဆိုပါတယ္။ အစိုးရအေနနဲ႔ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရး လမ္းေၾကာင္းအတိုင္းဆက္သြားမယ္ဆိုတဲ့ သႏၷိဌာန္ထားရွိဖို႔ကိုလည္း တိုက္တြန္းအားေပးပါတယ္” လို႔ ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲသလို သူမေျပာခင္ တရက္အၾကိဳမွာ အေမရိကန္ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး ဝန္ၾကီးဌာနကလည္း လာမယ့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ အတုိက္အခံေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို ပါခြင့္ေပးတာ အပါအဝင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ့ ေလာေလာဆယ္လုပ္တဲ့ အေျပာင္းအလဲေတြကို “အားေပး” ပါတယ္လို႔ ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။
တခ်ိဳ႔လူေတြကေတာ့ အစိုးရေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြၾကားက အကြဲအျပဲဆိုတာေတြဟာ ျပည္တြင္း အတိုက္အခံေတြ ျငိမ္ေနေအာင္၊ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြဆီက အရင္ ေဝဖန္သူေဟာင္းေတြရဲ့ အသံေတြ တိတ္ျပီး ႏိုင္ငံျခားမိတ္ေဆြေတြတိုးလာေအာင္ သူတို႔ စစ္ဗုိလ္ အခ်င္းခ်င္း ၾကားမွာ လူဆိုးလူေကာင္းအုပ္စုခြဲျပီး ဇာတ္တိုက္ကျပေနၾကတာလို႔ သံသယဝင္ၾကပါတယ္။ တခ်ဳိ႔ကေတာ့လည္း သိန္းစိန္ အစိုးရဟာ သူတို႔ စစ္အာဏာရွင္ အသိုင္းအဝိုင္းအတြင္းမွာေတာင္ သူ႔ေျခလွမ္းကို ၾကိဳမခန္႔မွန္းႏိုင္ေလာက္ေအာင္ ဝွက္ဖဲေတြကို ခုခ်ိန္အထိ ပါးပါးနပ္နပ္ ကိုင္တြယ္ျပီး ကစားေနတယ္လို႔ ျမင္ၾကပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာ့ ႏုိင္ငံေရး ျဖစ္ေပၚတိုးတက္မႈကို ဆယ္စုႏွစ္ေတြနဲ႔ ခ်ီျပီး ေလ့လာသူ ျမန္မာတေယာက္ကေတာ့ “တကယ္တန္း အာဏာရွိတာက စစ္တပ္ဗ်။ ဒီမိုကေရစီအစိုးရ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေတြမွာ ဘာအာဏာ မွ ရွိတာမဟုတ္ဘူး” လို႔ ေျပာပါတယ္။
စနစ္တက် အကြက္ခ်ထားတဲ့ အစီအမံ
ျမန္မာအစိုးရရဲ့ ေပၚလစီ အေျပာင္းအလဲနဲ႔ ဘာ့ေၾကာင့္ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြက ဒီေလာက္ေထာက္ခံေနၾက သလဲ ဆိုတာကို နားလည္ ႏိုင္ဖို႔ဆိုရင္ ၂၀၀၀ ခုလြန္အေစာပိုင္းကာလေတြကို ျပန္ေျပာင္းၾကည့္ရွဳဖို႔ လိုပါလိမ့္မယ္။ အဲဒီအခ်ိန္တုံးက ႏိုင္ငံတကာရဲ့ အျပစ္တင္မႈ၊ ဖိအားေပးမႈေတြရွိေနျပီး အုပ္စိုးသူ စစ္အစိုးရဟာ စည္းကမ္းျပည့္ဝေသာ ဒီမိုကေရစီသို႔ ခ်ီတက္ရာ လမ္းျပေျမပုံ ခုနစ္ခ်က္ဆိုတာကို ၂၀၀၃ ခု ၾသဂုတ္လမွာ ေၾကညာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီ လမ္းျပေျမပုံအရ အေျခခံဥပေဒသစ္ေရးဆြဲ၊ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲက်င္းပ၊ ျပီးရင္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ ေခၚယူျပီး ေခတ္မီဖြံ႔ျဖဳိးေသာ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ၾကီး တည္ေဆာက္မယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။
သမၼတ သိန္းစိန္ရဲ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရး ေျခလွမ္းေတြဆိုတာနဲ႔ အမ်ိဳးသားျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရး ဆုိတာကို အေနာက္ကမၻာ တခုလုံးက ကန္႔ကြက္သူ မရွိသေလာက္နီးနီး ခ်ီးမြမ္းၾသဘာေပးေနၾကတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ တကယ္တန္းဘာေတြ ေျပာင္းပါသလဲ။ အဲဒီအေျပာင္းအလဲဆိုတဲ့ အေျပာေတြရဲ့ ေနာက္ကြယ္မွာ ဘာေတြ ရွိေနသလဲ။
ဗုဒၶဘာသာ ဘုန္းေတာ္ၾကီးေတြ ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ ၂၀၀၇ ခုႏွစ္ ဆႏၵျပပြဲေတြ အေပၚမွာ ရက္ရက္စက္စက္ ႏွိမ္နင္းျဖဳိခြဲခဲ့တာ ေတြ၊ ၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္ အေစာပိုင္းတုန္းက ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့တဲ့ နာဂစ္ ေဘးဆိုးကာလၾကီးရဲ့ အစပိုင္းမွာ အၾကင္နာကင္းမဲ့ ရက္စက္တဲ့ တုန္႔ျပန္ပုံေတြ၊ ဒီလူသတ္မုန္တိုင္းၾကီး ျဖစ္ျပီးကာစမွာပဲ အေျခခံဥပေဒသစ္နဲ႔ ပတ္သက္တဲ့ အတုအေယာင္္ ဆႏၵခံယူပြဲဲၾကီးက်င္းပခဲ့လို႔ အမ်ားကဝိုင္းဝန္း ရွဳတ္ခ် ျပစ္တင္ခံရတာေတြ၊ ၂၀၁၀ ႏိုဝင္ဘာမွာ လုပ္တဲ့ အေထြေထြေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ ေျပာင္ေျပာင္တင္းတင္း မဲခိုး မဲညစ္ျပီး စစ္တပ္ေက်ာေထာက္ေနာက္ခံ ၾကံ့ဖြံ႔ေတြက မဲေတြ သိမ္းၾကံဳးလုယူသြားတာေတြကို မၾကာေသးခင္ကာလကေလးမွာပဲ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ အသိုင္းအဝိုင္းက ဝိုင္းဝန္းရွဳတ္ခ်အျပစ္တင္ခဲ့ၾကပါေသးတယ္။
အခုေခတ္စားေနတဲ့ သီအိုရီ တခုအရ အစိုးရအဖြဲ႔အတြင္းမွာ ေခါင္းမာသူေတြနဲ႔ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲလိုသူေတြ အာဏာလြန္ဆြဲေနၾကတယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ ခုေလာေလာဆယ္အထိေတာ့ ျပဳျပင္လိုသူေတြက အသာစီးရေနေသးတယ္လို႔လည္း ဆိုၾကေလရဲ့။ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံ ေတာ္ေတာ္ မ်ားမ်ားက ဘာပဲလုပ္လုပ္ သူတို႔ လုပ္တဲ့ အလုပ္တိုင္းဟာ ျပဳျပင္လိုသူေတြကို ေထာက္ခံအားေပးရာေရာက္ဖို႔ နဲ႔ ေလာေလာဆယ္ ျဖစ္ေပၚေနတဲ့ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲမႈေတြ ေနာက္ျပန္ဆုတ္မသြားဖို႔ ဆိုတဲ့ အခ်က္ အေပၚမွာ ေပၚလစီခ် ေဆာင္ရြက္ေန ၾကတာကလည္း အထင္အရွားပါပဲ။
ဥေရာပ သမဂၢနဲ႔ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုတို႔ဟာ ဒီသေဘာထားကို လူသိရွင္ၾကားထုတ္ေဖာ္ ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အီးယူ ဥေရာပ သမဂၢ ဥကၠဌ ဟားမန္း ဗန္ ရြန္းပါ က ဘရပ္ဆဲလ္ ထိပ္သီး အစည္းအေဝးမွာ ေၾကညာ ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ရာမွာ “ ျမန္မာအစိုးရရဲ့ အေရးပါတဲ့ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္း လဲမႈေတြကို ၾကိဳဆိုပါတယ္။ အစိုးရအေနနဲ႔ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရး လမ္းေၾကာင္းအတိုင္းဆက္သြားမယ္ဆိုတဲ့ သႏၷိဌာန္ထားရွိဖို႔ကိုလည္း တိုက္တြန္းအားေပးပါတယ္” လို႔ ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲသလို သူမေျပာခင္ တရက္အၾကိဳမွာ အေမရိကန္ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရး ဝန္ၾကီးဌာနကလည္း လာမယ့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ အတုိက္အခံေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို ပါခြင့္ေပးတာ အပါအဝင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ့ ေလာေလာဆယ္လုပ္တဲ့ အေျပာင္းအလဲေတြကို “အားေပး” ပါတယ္လို႔ ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။
တခ်ိဳ႔လူေတြကေတာ့ အစိုးရေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြၾကားက အကြဲအျပဲဆိုတာေတြဟာ ျပည္တြင္း အတိုက္အခံေတြ ျငိမ္ေနေအာင္၊ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြဆီက အရင္ ေဝဖန္သူေဟာင္းေတြရဲ့ အသံေတြ တိတ္ျပီး ႏိုင္ငံျခားမိတ္ေဆြေတြတိုးလာေအာင္ သူတို႔ စစ္ဗုိလ္ အခ်င္းခ်င္း ၾကားမွာ လူဆိုးလူေကာင္းအုပ္စုခြဲျပီး ဇာတ္တိုက္ကျပေနၾကတာလို႔ သံသယဝင္ၾကပါတယ္။ တခ်ဳိ႔ကေတာ့လည္း သိန္းစိန္ အစိုးရဟာ သူတို႔ စစ္အာဏာရွင္ အသိုင္းအဝိုင္းအတြင္းမွာေတာင္ သူ႔ေျခလွမ္းကို ၾကိဳမခန္႔မွန္းႏိုင္ေလာက္ေအာင္ ဝွက္ဖဲေတြကို ခုခ်ိန္အထိ ပါးပါးနပ္နပ္ ကိုင္တြယ္ျပီး ကစားေနတယ္လို႔ ျမင္ၾကပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာ့ ႏုိင္ငံေရး ျဖစ္ေပၚတိုးတက္မႈကို ဆယ္စုႏွစ္ေတြနဲ႔ ခ်ီျပီး ေလ့လာသူ ျမန္မာတေယာက္ကေတာ့ “တကယ္တန္း အာဏာရွိတာက စစ္တပ္ဗ်။ ဒီမိုကေရစီအစိုးရ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေတြမွာ ဘာအာဏာ မွ ရွိတာမဟုတ္ဘူး” လို႔ ေျပာပါတယ္။
စနစ္တက် အကြက္ခ်ထားတဲ့ အစီအမံ
ျမန္မာအစိုးရရဲ့ ေပၚလစီ အေျပာင္းအလဲနဲ႔ ဘာ့ေၾကာင့္ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြက ဒီေလာက္ေထာက္ခံေနၾက သလဲ ဆိုတာကို နားလည္ ႏိုင္ဖို႔ဆိုရင္ ၂၀၀၀ ခုလြန္အေစာပိုင္းကာလေတြကို ျပန္ေျပာင္းၾကည့္ရွဳဖို႔ လိုပါလိမ့္မယ္။ အဲဒီအခ်ိန္တုံးက ႏိုင္ငံတကာရဲ့ အျပစ္တင္မႈ၊ ဖိအားေပးမႈေတြရွိေနျပီး အုပ္စိုးသူ စစ္အစိုးရဟာ စည္းကမ္းျပည့္ဝေသာ ဒီမိုကေရစီသို႔ ခ်ီတက္ရာ လမ္းျပေျမပုံ ခုနစ္ခ်က္ဆိုတာကို ၂၀၀၃ ခု ၾသဂုတ္လမွာ ေၾကညာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီ လမ္းျပေျမပုံအရ အေျခခံဥပေဒသစ္ေရးဆြဲ၊ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲက်င္းပ၊ ျပီးရင္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ ေခၚယူျပီး ေခတ္မီဖြံ႔ျဖဳိးေသာ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ၾကီး တည္ေဆာက္မယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။
လမ္းျပေျမပုံကို ျပည္သူသိေအာင္ ေၾကညာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ တခ်ိန္တည္းမွာပဲ လွ်ိဳ႔ဝွက္ မဟာစီမံကိန္းတရပ္ကို တျပိဳင္တည္း ေရးဆြဲခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီစီမံကိန္းမွာ အေမရိကန္ အပါအဝင္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာအသိုင္းအဝိုင္းကို ဘယ္လိုဆက္ဆံမယ္ဆိုတဲ့ နည္းလမ္းေတြနဲ႔ အတိုက္အခံကို ဘယ္လိုဟန္႔တားမယ္ဆိုတာေတြ ထည့္သြင္းေရးဆြဲထားပါတယ္။ ဒီအက္စ္ေအရဲ့ သုေတသန အရာရွိတေယာက္ျဖစ္တဲ့ ဗိုလ္မွဴးေအာင္ေက်ာ္လွ ေရးသားတယ္ဆိုတဲ့ အဲဒီလွ်ိဳ႔ဝ်က္ စီမံကိန္းကို ၂၀၀၄ ခုႏွစ္မွာ ေရးသားျပီးစီးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဗိုလ္မွဴးေအာင္ေက်ာ္လွဆိုတာ ဘယ္သူလဲဆိုတာေတာ့ ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ မသိရပါဘူး။
ျမန္မာဘာသာနဲ႔ ေရးတဲ့ အဲဒီစာတမ္းမွာ မဟာစီမံကိန္းရဲ့ ေနာက္ကြယ္က ေသနဂၤဗ်ဴဟာကို သုံးသပ္ေဖာ္ျပထားပါတယ္။ ေအာင္ေက်ာ္လွဆိုတာဟာ တကယ္ရွိတဲ့လူတေယာက္လား၊ နာမည္ဝွက္လားဆိုတာ ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ မသိရေပမဲ့ နာမည္ဝွက္လို႔ ယူဆစရာရွိပါတယ္။
စာမ်က္ႏွာ ၃၄၆ မ်က္ႏွာရွိျပီး ျမန္မာ အေမရိကန္ ဆက္ဆံေရး ေလ့လာခ်က္ လို႔ နာမည္ေပးထားတဲ့ အဲဒီစာတမ္းမွာ အဓိကေဆြးေႏြးထားတာကေတာ့ ျမန္မာရဲ့ တရုတ္နဲ႔ သံတမန္ေရးရာ မဟာမိတ္ဖြဲ႔ထားတဲ့ အေနအထားနဲ႔ စီးပြားေရး မီခိုအားထားေနရတဲ့ အေျခအေနဟာ တိုင္းျပည္ရဲ့ လြတ္လပ္ေရးကို ျခိမ္းေျခာက္ခံေနရတဲ့ အေရးေပၚ အေျခအေနကို ျဖစ္ေပၚေစတယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။
ဒီစာတမ္းရဲ့ အၾကံျပဳခ်က္အရ၊ လမ္းျပေျမပုံခုနစ္ခ်က္ကို အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္၊ အစိုးရတရပ္ကို ေရြးေကာက္တင္ေျမွာက္ျခင္းအားျဖင့္ ျပင္ပကမၻာက လက္ခံႏို္င္ေလာက္တဲ့ ပုံစံျဖစ္လာေအာင္လုပ္တဲ့နည္းလမ္းက်င့္သုံးျပီး အေနာက္အုပ္စုနဲ႔ ျမန္မာရဲ့ ဆက္ဆံေရးကို ပုံမွန္ျပန္ျဖစ္ေအာင္လုပ္ရမယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို စစ္အစိုးရပုံစံနဲ႔ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေနေသးသမွ်မွာ အေနာက္ကမၻာနဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံေရး ပုံမွန္ မျဖစ္ႏိုင္ဘူးလို႔ သူတို႔အတြင္းစည္းမွာေတြးေခၚယူဆတာကေတာ့ ထင္ရွားလွပါတယ္။
ဒါ့အျပင္ မဟာစီမံကိန္းစာတမ္းမွာ ေအာင္ေက်ာ္လွ အၾကံေပးထားတာက လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ျပႆနာကို အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြက စိုးရိမ္ပူပန္ တာမွန္ေပမဲ့ အေမရိကန္ဟာ သူတို႔ရဲ့ ေသနဂၤဗ်ဴဟာ အတြက္ အေရးပါတဲ့ အက်ဳိးစီးပြားေတြေၾကာင့္ သူတို႔မူကို ျပင္ဖို႔ ဆႏၵရွိလိမ့္မယ္လို႔ ဆိုထားပါတယ္။ ေသနဂၤဗ်ဴဟာက်တဲ့ အက်ိဳးစီးပြားဆိုတာ ဘာေတြလဲဆိုတဲ့ အခ်က္ကိုေတာ့ အတိအက် ေျပာျပ မထားပါဘူး။ ဒါေပမဲ့ သူေတြးေခၚပုံဟာ အေမရိကန္ တရုတ္အားျပိဳင္မႈကို အေျခခံျပီး အေမရိကန္နဲ႔ ဘုံအက်ိဳးတူ အေျခခံကိုရွာေဖြေတြ႔ရွိႏိုင္မယ္လို႔ ေတြးတာ ထင္ရွားပါတယ္။ အေမရိကန္ဟာ ေသနဂၤဗ်ဴဟာအရ အေရးပါတဲ့ အက်ိဳးစီးပြားေတြနဲ႔ သက္ဆိုင္လာရင္ ဒီမိုကေရစီနဲ႔ ဆန္႔က်င္ေနေသာ္ ျငားလည္း သူ႔မူဝါဒကို ျပဳျပင္ အေလ်ာ့ေပးတတ္ေၾကာင္းကို ေအာင္ေက်ာ္လွက ဗီယက္နမ္နဲ႔ အာဏာရွင္ဆူဟာတို လက္ထက္ အင္ဒိုနီးရွား ဥပမာေတြနဲ႔ ေထာက္ျပေျပာဆိုပါတယ္။
တကယ္လို႔ အေမရိကန္နဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံေရး ေကာင္းမြန္ေအာင္လုပ္ႏိုင္ရင္ ျမန္မာအေနနဲ႔ ေသလုေမ်ာပါး လိုအပ္ေနတဲ့ ကမၻာ့ဘဏ္၊ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ ေငြေၾကးရန္ပုံေငြ အဖြဲ႔ IMF ၊ နဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ ဘ႑ာေရး အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြဆီက ေငြေၾကးအကူအညီကို ရႏိုင္မယ္လို႔ အဲဒီ မဟာစီမံကိန္းကေဖာ္ျပပါတယ္။ ဒါဆိုရင္ ျမန္မာဟာ တရုတ္အပါအဝင္ အိမ္နီးခ်င္းႏိုင္ငံေတြရဲ့ ေစတနာနဲ႔ ကုန္သြယ္ေရး အေပၚမွာ မီခိုေန ရတဲ့ ေဒသတြင္းႏိုင္ငံတႏိုင္ငံအဆင့္ကေန ေက်ာ္လြန္ျပီး ဂလိုဘယ္လိုက္ေဇးရွင္းေခတ္ထဲကို ဝင္ေရာက္ႏိုင္လိမ့္မယ္လို႔ အၾကံျပဳထားပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာဟာ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြရဲ့ ယုံၾကည္မႈရေအာင္ တရုတ္နဲ႔ မဟာမိတ္ဖြဲ႔ထားတဲ့ ဆက္ဆံေရးကို မေလ်ာ့ခ်ခင္မွာ ေပၚေပါက္လာႏိုင္တဲ့ ျပႆနာေတြကိုလည္း မဟာစီမံကိန္းမွာ ျပည့္ျပည့္စုံစုံေဖာ္ျပထားပါတယ္။ အဲဒီစီမံကိန္းကို ေရးဆြဲေနစဥ္ကာလဟာ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို ဖမ္းဆီးထားတဲ့ကာလျဖစ္ျပီး အဲဒီစာတမ္းထဲမွာ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ဟာ ေသာ့ခ်က္ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ ေရးထား ပါတယ္။ သူ႔ကို ဖမ္းထားတဲ့ အခ်ိန္ေတြမွာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးဖိအားေတြ ပိုမိုလာျပီး သူ႔ကို လႊတ္ေပးထားရင္ ဖိအားေတြေလ်ာ့သြားတယ္လို႔လည္း သုံးသပ္ထားပါတယ္။ စုၾကည္ကို လႊတ္ေပးျခင္းဟာ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြနဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံေရးကို တိုးတက္ေစလိမ့္မယ္လို႔ အစီရင္ခံစာမွာ ေရးထား သလို သူ႔ရဲ့ အဆုံးစြန္ရည္မွန္းခ်က္အျဖစ္ ရွင္းရွင္းလင္းလင္းေရးသားထားတာကေတာ့ အတိုက္အခံအင္အားစုကို ျဖဳိခြဲေရးပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
တခ်ိန္တည္းမွာပဲ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြရဲ့ ပိတ္ဆို႔ေရး ကို ဆန္႔က်င္တဲ့ အေနာက္တိုင္း ပညာရွင္ေတြကိုလည္း နာမည္နဲ႔ တကြေဖာ္ျပပါတယ္။ စိတ္ဝင္စားစရာေကာင္းတဲ့ အၾကံျပဳခ်က္ကေတာ့ ၾသဇာရွိတဲ့ အေမရိကန္ ကြန္ဂရက္စ္ အမတ္ေတြရဲ့ ေနာက္ခံ အခ်က္အလက္ေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ျပီး ခင္မင္ရင္းႏွီးေေသာ အိႏၵိယ သံတမန္မ်ားကအကူအညီ ေပးပါလိမ့္မယ္လို႔ ဆိုထားတဲ့ အခ်က္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
စာတမ္းမွာ အဆုံးသတ္ေကာက္ခ်က္ခ်ထားတာကေတာ့ အစိုးရဟာ မီဒီယာေတြနဲ႔ ျပည္ပေရာက္ အတိုက္အခံေတြ ဖြဲ႔ထားတဲ့ အစိုးရမဟုတ္တဲ့ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြကို ယွဥ္ႏိုင္မွာ မဟုတ္ေပမဲ့ အေမရိကန္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားေတြနဲ႔ လႊတ္ေတာ္အမတ္ေတြကို ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံလာဖို႔ ဖိတ္ၾကားလိုက္ရင္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာရဲ့ အျမင္ကို အစိုးရဘက္ပါလာေအာင္ တျဖည္းျဖည္း ေျပာင္းလဲႏိုင္ပါလိမ့္မယ္လို႔ ဆိုထားပါတယ္။ ျပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ႏွစ္ေတြ အတြင္းမွာ အေမရိကန္ အမ်ားအျပားဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံထဲကို ေရာက္လာၾကျပီး ျပန္သြားတဲ့ အခါ အရင္က ထက္ေဝဖန္တဲ့ အသံေတြ တျဖည္းျဖည္းေပ်ာ့လာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ေနာက္ဆုံးမွာေတာ့ ျမန္မာအစိုးရဟာ အေမရိကန္နဲ႔ ထိေတြ႔ဆက္ ဆံေရးမွာ အေပးအယူအျပန္အလွန္ဆိုတဲ့ အေျခအေနမဟုတ္ဘဲ အသာစီးရတဲ့ အေျခအေနျဖစ္ေအာင္ ေအာင္ေအာင္ျမင္ျမင္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ ႏိုင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
တရုတ္ေၾကာက္ေရာဂါ
ေအာင္ေက်ာ္လွရဲ့ ဒီစာတမ္းဟာ တရုတ္နဲ႔ နီးနီးစပ္စပ္ ဆက္ဆံေနရတဲ့ အေပၚ စစ္အစိုးရရဲ့ မႏွစ္သက္မႈကို ပထမဆုံး ရွင္းရွင္းလင္းလင္း ေဖာ္ျပတဲ့ လကၡဏာရပ္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ တရုတ္နဲ႔ နီးစပ္လာတာဟာ ၁၉၈၈ ခုႏွစ္ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ေတာင္းဆိုတဲ့ လူထု လႈပ္ရွားမႈၾကီး ကို သတ္ျဖတ္ႏွိမ္နင္းမႈနဲ႔ တျခား လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ခ်ဳိးေဖာက္မႈေတြ ေၾကာင့္ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြက ျမန္မာနဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံေရးကို ေလ်ာ့ခ်လိုက္တာ ကလည္း အေၾကာင္းတေၾကာင္းအေနနဲ႔ တစိတ္တေဒသအားျဖင့္ ပါဝင္ပါတယ္။ တရုတ္နဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံေရး ပိုျပီး ဆိုးလာတာကိုေတာ့ ၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္အတြင္း စစ္တပ္အတြင္းမွာပဲ ျဖန္႔ေဝ ဖတ္ရွဳတဲ့ အစီရင္ခံစာေတြကို ဖတ္ၾကည့္ရင္ ပိုေပၚလြင္လာပါတယ္။
အဲဒီကာလအထိ တရုတ္ကို အားကိုးထိုက္တဲ့ မိတ္ေဆြလို႔ ခ်ီးမြမ္းေျပာဆိုမႈေတြ ဆက္ရွိေနေသးေပမဲ့ သစ္ေတာ သယံဇာတေတြကို မေတာ္မတရား ရယူမႈ၊ မူးယစ္ေမွာင္ခိုကုန္သြယ္ေရးကို ဆိုးဝါးေစမႈ အပါအဝင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ ဆိုးဆိုးဝါးဝါး ကိစၥအမ်ားစုမွာ တရုတ္ဟာ ဇစ္ျမစ္ အေၾကာင္းတရားျဖစ္သလားဆိုတာကို တျဖည္းျဖည္း သုံးသပ္စျပဳလာတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ အဓိက မူးယစ္ေဆးဝါး ကုန္သြယ္ေရး လုပ္တဲ့ လက္နက္ကိုင္ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ျဖစ္တဲ့ ဝျပည္ေသြးစည္းညီညြတ္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္ (UWSA) နဲ႔ တရုပ္ၾကား ရင္းရင္းႏွီးႏွီး ဆက္သြယ္ပတ္သက္ေနတာကိုလည္း ေနျပည္ေတာ္အစိုးရ အာဏာပိုင္ေတြ အေနနဲ႔ သတိမျပဳမိစရာ အေၾကာင္းမရွိဘူး။ အဲဒီ့ေနာက္ ၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္ စက္တင္ဘာလမွာေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေျမာက္ပိုင္းမွာ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတဲ့ ေဒၚလာ သန္း ၃၆၀၀ တန္ တရုတ္ဖက္စပ္ ျမစ္ဆုံ စီမံကိန္းကို သိန္းစိန္အစိုးရက ဆိုင္းငံ့လိုက္ေၾကာင္း ဆုံးျဖတ္ခ်က္ ထြက္ေပၚလာပါေတာ့တယ္။
အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုဘက္က ၾကည့္ေတာ့လည္း ေနျပည္ေတာ္အစိုးရက အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုနဲ႔ ထိေတြ႔ ပူးေပါင္းလိုေၾကာင္း ျပသတဲ့ အခ်ိန္မွာ ျမန္မာကို တရုတ္နဲ႔ ခြဲခြာေအာင္ အားေပးအားေျမွာက္ျပဳလုပ္ေပးေရးဟာ အဓိကဦးစားေပး ျဖစ္လာတယ္။ ဒါ့အျပင္ သူတို႔ အတြက္ စိတ္အေႏွာက္အယွက္ျဖစ္ေစတဲ့ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားနဲ႔ ျမန္မာအၾကား စစ္ေရး ဆက္စပ္မႈကို ပ်က္ျပယ္ေအာင္လုပ္ဖို႔လည္း အေမရိကန္အစိုးရ အေနနဲ႔ စိတ္အားထက္သန္တယ္။ ျပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ဒီဇင္ဘာလမွာ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဝန္ၾကီး ဟီလာရီကလင္တန္ ျမန္မာႏို္င္ငံကို လာေတာ့ အေမရိကန္ရဲ့ အဓိက လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ေတြထဲမွာ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားအေရးဟာ ထိပ္ပိုင္းကပါလာတာဟာ ဘာမွ အံ့ၾသစရာမရွိဘူး။
ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရး လိုလားပါတယ္ဆိုတဲ့ သိန္းစိန္ သမၼတျဖစ္လာျပီးေနာက္၊ အစိုးရ အရာရွိေတြက သူတို႔နဲ႔ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားအၾကား စစ္ဘက္ဆိုင္ရာ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္မႈ မရွိပါဘူးလို႔ ေၾကညာျပီးေနာက္၊ ၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္ ေမလ၊ ဇြန္လေတြမွာေတာင္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားက ေန ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို သေဘၤာနဲ႔ လက္နက္တင္ပို႔ဖို႔ အၾကိမ္ၾကိမ္ၾကိဳးစားခဲ့တဲ့ မွတ္တမ္းေတြရွိခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ေမလ ၂၆ ရက္မွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြက္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားက မစ္ဇိုင္းလက္နက္ အစိတ္အပိုင္းေတြနဲ႔ စစ္လက္နက္ေတြ သယ္ေဆာင္လာ တယ္လို႔ သံသယရွိဖြယ္ျဖစ္တဲ့ M/V Light ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား ကုန္တင္သေဘၤာကို အေမရိကန္ ေရတပ္ပိုင္ USS McCampbell ေလယာဥ္တင္ သေဘၤာက ေတြ႔ခဲ့တယ္။ အေမရိကန္ သေဘၤာက ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယာ သေဘၤာဆီခ်ဥ္းကပ္ျပီး သေဘၤာေပၚတက္ေရာက္ စစ္ေဆးခြင့္ေတာင္းေပမဲ့ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားဘက္က ျငင္းခဲ့တယ္။ ေနာက္ထပ္ ရက္ အနည္းအငယ္အၾကာ စကၤာပူႏို္င္ငံအနီး ရွန္ဟိုင္းေတာင္ဘက္ ပင္လယ္ျပင္ ထဲမွာေတာ့ ႏွစ္ဘက္ ရင္ဆိုင္ အခ်င္းမ်ားခဲ့ၾကတယ္။ ေနာက္ဆုံးမွာေတာ့ အေမရိကန္ ကင္းေထာက္ေလယာဥ္ေတြနဲ႔ ဆက္သြယ္ေရး ျဂိဳဟ္တုက လမ္းတေလ်ာက္ ေတာက္ေလ်ာက္ ေစာင့္ၾကပ္လိုက္ပါလာတဲ့ အတြက္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား သေဘၤာ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားကို ျပန္လွည့္သြားခဲ့တယ္။
အဲဒီအျဖစ္အပ်က္ေနာက္ပိုင္း ေနျပည္ေတာ္ ျမန္မာအစိုးရအေနနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံတကာဘ႑ာေရး အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြဆီကေန ေငြေၾကးအကူအညီ ရယူႏိုင္ေအာင္ အေမရိကန္ဘက္က ပိတ္ဆို႔ အေရးယူမႈတခ်ိဳ႔ကို ေလ်ာ့ေပါ့ေပးဖို႔ မက္လုံးေပးခဲ့ျပီး ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား လက္နက္သေဘၤာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကိုလာေရာက္ဖို႔ ေနာက္ထပ္ၾကိဳးစားတာမ်ဳိးလည္း မၾကားရေတာ့ပါဘူး။ ျမန္မာအစိုးရအေနနဲ႔ တရုတ္ကေနခြဲခြာခ်င္တဲ့ ဆႏၵကို အေမရိကန္က ေကာင္းေကာင္း အျမတ္ထုတ္ အသုံးခ်ခဲ့တယ္ဆိုတာ သံသယ ဝင္စရာမရွိပါဘူး။ “အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုဘက္က ၾကိဳးစား ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတာကေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို လစ္ဘရယ္အသြင္ေျပာင္းခ်င္တဲ့ အင္အားစုေတြကို ေထာက္ခံအားေပးေၾကာင္း ျပသဖို႔ပါပဲ” လို႔ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ ခ်ဴလာေလာင္ကြန္း တကၠသိုလ္မွာ အခုအခါ အလုပ္လုပ္ေနတဲ့ အေမရိကန္ သံတမန္ေဟာင္း ေရာဘတ္ ဖစ္ ကေျပာပါတယ္။
မၾကာခင္မွာ ျမန္မာနဲ႔ သံတမန္ဆက္သြယ္ေရး ျမွင့္တင္တဲ့ အေနနဲ႔ အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို သံအမတ္ခန္႔အပ္ ပါေတာ့မယ္။ ျပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ေဖေဖာ္ဝါရီလ ၇ ရက္ထုတ္ အေမရိကန္ နယူးေယာက္တိုင္း သတင္းစာမွာ အေမရိကန္ ဗဟိုေထာက္လွမ္းေရးအဖြဲ႔ စီအိုင္ေအရဲ့ ညႊန္ၾကားေရးမွဴး ေဒးဗစ္ ပက္ထရီးရပ္စ္ ဒီႏွစ္ထဲမွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို သြားမယ္လို႔ အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရ အရာရွိေတြကို ကိုးကားျပီး ေရးသားခဲ့ ပါတယ္။ စီအိုင္ေအဟာ ဖြံ႔ျဖိဳးဆဲႏိုင္ငံေတြရဲ့ လစ္ဘရယ္တန္ဖိုးေတြကို ျမွင့္တင္ေပးသူ ေထာက္ခံအားေပးသူ အေနနဲ႔ လူသိမ်ားတဲ့ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ဳိး လုံးဝ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ စီအိုင္ေအရဲ့ ဦးစားေပးလုပ္ငန္းဟာ အေမရိကန္အတြက္ ျမန္မာရဲ့ ေသနဂၤဗ်ဴဟာ အရ အေရးပါတဲ့ ကိစၥလိုဟာမ်ဳိးကို ေဆာင္ရြက္ဖို႔ပါ။
ဒီေနရာမွာ အႏၱရာယ္ရွိလာႏိုင္တဲ့ အခ်က္ကို လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ (၇) ႏွစ္ကတည္းက ေအာင္ေက်ာ္လွက ေရးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာဟာ အေမရိကန္နဲ႔ အျပန္အလွန္ဆက္ဆံေရး တိုးျမွင့္လာရင္ တရုတ္ဟာ ျမန္မာရဲ့ ေသြးစည္းခိုင္မာမႈနဲ႔ လြတ္လပ္ေရးကို တနည္းနည္းနဲ႔ ျခိမ္းေျခာက္လာ ႏိုင္တယ္ဆိုတာပါပဲ။ ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ အားမွ်ေအာင္ခ်င့္ခ်ိန္ေဆာင္ရြက္ဖို႔လိုအပ္တယ္လို႔ ေအာင္ေက်ာ္လွက ေျပာပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ဘယ္လို အားမွ်ေအာင္လုပ္မလဲဆိုတာကိုေတာ့ သူ႔ရဲ့ မဟာစီမံကိန္းမွာ ထည့္သြင္းေရးသားမထားပါဘူး။
ေကာင္းေကာင္းျပင္ဆင္ထားတဲ့ လမ္းေၾကာင္း
ျမန္မာရဲ့ ေပၚလစီသစ္ေတြဟာ ေရရွည္ အလုပ္ျဖစ္ပါ့မလားဆိုတာေတာ့ သံသယဝင္စရာ အေၾကာင္းေတြရွိပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏို္င္ငံက စစ္အစိုးရဝင္စားတဲ့ အရပ္သားအစိုးရထဲမွာ လူေကာင္း၊ လူဆိုး အုပ္စုကြဲျပားေနတယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ဝတ္စုံျပည့္ ကျပေနတဲ့ဇာတ္လမ္းကို ႏိုင္ငံ တကာက ယုံၾကည္ပုံရေပမဲ့ ျပည္တြင္းျပည္ပက အဓိက အတိုက္အခံအင္အားစုေတြကေတာ့ ဒီေလာက္ အညွာလြယ္လြယ္နဲ႔ ယုံၾကည္ ၾကပုံမရပါဘူး။
ေအာင္ေက်ာ္လွရဲ့ ဒီစာတမ္းဟာ တရုတ္နဲ႔ နီးနီးစပ္စပ္ ဆက္ဆံေနရတဲ့ အေပၚ စစ္အစိုးရရဲ့ မႏွစ္သက္မႈကို ပထမဆုံး ရွင္းရွင္းလင္းလင္း ေဖာ္ျပတဲ့ လကၡဏာရပ္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ တရုတ္နဲ႔ နီးစပ္လာတာဟာ ၁၉၈၈ ခုႏွစ္ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ေတာင္းဆိုတဲ့ လူထု လႈပ္ရွားမႈၾကီး ကို သတ္ျဖတ္ႏွိမ္နင္းမႈနဲ႔ တျခား လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ခ်ဳိးေဖာက္မႈေတြ ေၾကာင့္ အေနာက္ႏိုင္ငံေတြက ျမန္မာနဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံေရးကို ေလ်ာ့ခ်လိုက္တာ ကလည္း အေၾကာင္းတေၾကာင္းအေနနဲ႔ တစိတ္တေဒသအားျဖင့္ ပါဝင္ပါတယ္။ တရုတ္နဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံေရး ပိုျပီး ဆိုးလာတာကိုေတာ့ ၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္အတြင္း စစ္တပ္အတြင္းမွာပဲ ျဖန္႔ေဝ ဖတ္ရွဳတဲ့ အစီရင္ခံစာေတြကို ဖတ္ၾကည့္ရင္ ပိုေပၚလြင္လာပါတယ္။
အဲဒီကာလအထိ တရုတ္ကို အားကိုးထိုက္တဲ့ မိတ္ေဆြလို႔ ခ်ီးမြမ္းေျပာဆိုမႈေတြ ဆက္ရွိေနေသးေပမဲ့ သစ္ေတာ သယံဇာတေတြကို မေတာ္မတရား ရယူမႈ၊ မူးယစ္ေမွာင္ခိုကုန္သြယ္ေရးကို ဆိုးဝါးေစမႈ အပါအဝင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ ဆိုးဆိုးဝါးဝါး ကိစၥအမ်ားစုမွာ တရုတ္ဟာ ဇစ္ျမစ္ အေၾကာင္းတရားျဖစ္သလားဆိုတာကို တျဖည္းျဖည္း သုံးသပ္စျပဳလာတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ အဓိက မူးယစ္ေဆးဝါး ကုန္သြယ္ေရး လုပ္တဲ့ လက္နက္ကိုင္ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ျဖစ္တဲ့ ဝျပည္ေသြးစည္းညီညြတ္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္ (UWSA) နဲ႔ တရုပ္ၾကား ရင္းရင္းႏွီးႏွီး ဆက္သြယ္ပတ္သက္ေနတာကိုလည္း ေနျပည္ေတာ္အစိုးရ အာဏာပိုင္ေတြ အေနနဲ႔ သတိမျပဳမိစရာ အေၾကာင္းမရွိဘူး။ အဲဒီ့ေနာက္ ၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္ စက္တင္ဘာလမွာေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေျမာက္ပိုင္းမွာ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတဲ့ ေဒၚလာ သန္း ၃၆၀၀ တန္ တရုတ္ဖက္စပ္ ျမစ္ဆုံ စီမံကိန္းကို သိန္းစိန္အစိုးရက ဆိုင္းငံ့လိုက္ေၾကာင္း ဆုံးျဖတ္ခ်က္ ထြက္ေပၚလာပါေတာ့တယ္။
အေမရိကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုဘက္က ၾကည့္ေတာ့လည္း ေနျပည္ေတာ္အစိုးရက အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုနဲ႔ ထိေတြ႔ ပူးေပါင္းလိုေၾကာင္း ျပသတဲ့ အခ်ိန္မွာ ျမန္မာကို တရုတ္နဲ႔ ခြဲခြာေအာင္ အားေပးအားေျမွာက္ျပဳလုပ္ေပးေရးဟာ အဓိကဦးစားေပး ျဖစ္လာတယ္။ ဒါ့အျပင္ သူတို႔ အတြက္ စိတ္အေႏွာက္အယွက္ျဖစ္ေစတဲ့ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားနဲ႔ ျမန္မာအၾကား စစ္ေရး ဆက္စပ္မႈကို ပ်က္ျပယ္ေအာင္လုပ္ဖို႔လည္း အေမရိကန္အစိုးရ အေနနဲ႔ စိတ္အားထက္သန္တယ္။ ျပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ဒီဇင္ဘာလမွာ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရးဝန္ၾကီး ဟီလာရီကလင္တန္ ျမန္မာႏို္င္ငံကို လာေတာ့ အေမရိကန္ရဲ့ အဓိက လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ေတြထဲမွာ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားအေရးဟာ ထိပ္ပိုင္းကပါလာတာဟာ ဘာမွ အံ့ၾသစရာမရွိဘူး။
ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရး လိုလားပါတယ္ဆိုတဲ့ သိန္းစိန္ သမၼတျဖစ္လာျပီးေနာက္၊ အစိုးရ အရာရွိေတြက သူတို႔နဲ႔ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားအၾကား စစ္ဘက္ဆိုင္ရာ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္မႈ မရွိပါဘူးလို႔ ေၾကညာျပီးေနာက္၊ ၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္ ေမလ၊ ဇြန္လေတြမွာေတာင္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားက ေန ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို သေဘၤာနဲ႔ လက္နက္တင္ပို႔ဖို႔ အၾကိမ္ၾကိမ္ၾကိဳးစားခဲ့တဲ့ မွတ္တမ္းေတြရွိခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ေမလ ၂၆ ရက္မွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြက္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားက မစ္ဇိုင္းလက္နက္ အစိတ္အပိုင္းေတြနဲ႔ စစ္လက္နက္ေတြ သယ္ေဆာင္လာ တယ္လို႔ သံသယရွိဖြယ္ျဖစ္တဲ့ M/V Light ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား ကုန္တင္သေဘၤာကို အေမရိကန္ ေရတပ္ပိုင္ USS McCampbell ေလယာဥ္တင္ သေဘၤာက ေတြ႔ခဲ့တယ္။ အေမရိကန္ သေဘၤာက ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယာ သေဘၤာဆီခ်ဥ္းကပ္ျပီး သေဘၤာေပၚတက္ေရာက္ စစ္ေဆးခြင့္ေတာင္းေပမဲ့ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားဘက္က ျငင္းခဲ့တယ္။ ေနာက္ထပ္ ရက္ အနည္းအငယ္အၾကာ စကၤာပူႏို္င္ငံအနီး ရွန္ဟိုင္းေတာင္ဘက္ ပင္လယ္ျပင္ ထဲမွာေတာ့ ႏွစ္ဘက္ ရင္ဆိုင္ အခ်င္းမ်ားခဲ့ၾကတယ္။ ေနာက္ဆုံးမွာေတာ့ အေမရိကန္ ကင္းေထာက္ေလယာဥ္ေတြနဲ႔ ဆက္သြယ္ေရး ျဂိဳဟ္တုက လမ္းတေလ်ာက္ ေတာက္ေလ်ာက္ ေစာင့္ၾကပ္လိုက္ပါလာတဲ့ အတြက္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား သေဘၤာ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားကို ျပန္လွည့္သြားခဲ့တယ္။
အဲဒီအျဖစ္အပ်က္ေနာက္ပိုင္း ေနျပည္ေတာ္ ျမန္မာအစိုးရအေနနဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံတကာဘ႑ာေရး အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြဆီကေန ေငြေၾကးအကူအညီ ရယူႏိုင္ေအာင္ အေမရိကန္ဘက္က ပိတ္ဆို႔ အေရးယူမႈတခ်ိဳ႔ကို ေလ်ာ့ေပါ့ေပးဖို႔ မက္လုံးေပးခဲ့ျပီး ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား လက္နက္သေဘၤာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကိုလာေရာက္ဖို႔ ေနာက္ထပ္ၾကိဳးစားတာမ်ဳိးလည္း မၾကားရေတာ့ပါဘူး။ ျမန္မာအစိုးရအေနနဲ႔ တရုတ္ကေနခြဲခြာခ်င္တဲ့ ဆႏၵကို အေမရိကန္က ေကာင္းေကာင္း အျမတ္ထုတ္ အသုံးခ်ခဲ့တယ္ဆိုတာ သံသယ ဝင္စရာမရွိပါဘူး။ “အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုဘက္က ၾကိဳးစား ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတာကေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို လစ္ဘရယ္အသြင္ေျပာင္းခ်င္တဲ့ အင္အားစုေတြကို ေထာက္ခံအားေပးေၾကာင္း ျပသဖို႔ပါပဲ” လို႔ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ ခ်ဴလာေလာင္ကြန္း တကၠသိုလ္မွာ အခုအခါ အလုပ္လုပ္ေနတဲ့ အေမရိကန္ သံတမန္ေဟာင္း ေရာဘတ္ ဖစ္ ကေျပာပါတယ္။
မၾကာခင္မွာ ျမန္မာနဲ႔ သံတမန္ဆက္သြယ္ေရး ျမွင့္တင္တဲ့ အေနနဲ႔ အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို သံအမတ္ခန္႔အပ္ ပါေတာ့မယ္။ ျပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ေဖေဖာ္ဝါရီလ ၇ ရက္ထုတ္ အေမရိကန္ နယူးေယာက္တိုင္း သတင္းစာမွာ အေမရိကန္ ဗဟိုေထာက္လွမ္းေရးအဖြဲ႔ စီအိုင္ေအရဲ့ ညႊန္ၾကားေရးမွဴး ေဒးဗစ္ ပက္ထရီးရပ္စ္ ဒီႏွစ္ထဲမွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို သြားမယ္လို႔ အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရ အရာရွိေတြကို ကိုးကားျပီး ေရးသားခဲ့ ပါတယ္။ စီအိုင္ေအဟာ ဖြံ႔ျဖိဳးဆဲႏိုင္ငံေတြရဲ့ လစ္ဘရယ္တန္ဖိုးေတြကို ျမွင့္တင္ေပးသူ ေထာက္ခံအားေပးသူ အေနနဲ႔ လူသိမ်ားတဲ့ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ဳိး လုံးဝ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ စီအိုင္ေအရဲ့ ဦးစားေပးလုပ္ငန္းဟာ အေမရိကန္အတြက္ ျမန္မာရဲ့ ေသနဂၤဗ်ဴဟာ အရ အေရးပါတဲ့ ကိစၥလိုဟာမ်ဳိးကို ေဆာင္ရြက္ဖို႔ပါ။
ဒီေနရာမွာ အႏၱရာယ္ရွိလာႏိုင္တဲ့ အခ်က္ကို လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ (၇) ႏွစ္ကတည္းက ေအာင္ေက်ာ္လွက ေရးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာဟာ အေမရိကန္နဲ႔ အျပန္အလွန္ဆက္ဆံေရး တိုးျမွင့္လာရင္ တရုတ္ဟာ ျမန္မာရဲ့ ေသြးစည္းခိုင္မာမႈနဲ႔ လြတ္လပ္ေရးကို တနည္းနည္းနဲ႔ ျခိမ္းေျခာက္လာ ႏိုင္တယ္ဆိုတာပါပဲ။ ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ အားမွ်ေအာင္ခ်င့္ခ်ိန္ေဆာင္ရြက္ဖို႔လိုအပ္တယ္လို႔ ေအာင္ေက်ာ္လွက ေျပာပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ဘယ္လို အားမွ်ေအာင္လုပ္မလဲဆိုတာကိုေတာ့ သူ႔ရဲ့ မဟာစီမံကိန္းမွာ ထည့္သြင္းေရးသားမထားပါဘူး။
ေကာင္းေကာင္းျပင္ဆင္ထားတဲ့ လမ္းေၾကာင္း
ျမန္မာရဲ့ ေပၚလစီသစ္ေတြဟာ ေရရွည္ အလုပ္ျဖစ္ပါ့မလားဆိုတာေတာ့ သံသယဝင္စရာ အေၾကာင္းေတြရွိပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏို္င္ငံက စစ္အစိုးရဝင္စားတဲ့ အရပ္သားအစိုးရထဲမွာ လူေကာင္း၊ လူဆိုး အုပ္စုကြဲျပားေနတယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ဝတ္စုံျပည့္ ကျပေနတဲ့ဇာတ္လမ္းကို ႏိုင္ငံ တကာက ယုံၾကည္ပုံရေပမဲ့ ျပည္တြင္းျပည္ပက အဓိက အတိုက္အခံအင္အားစုေတြကေတာ့ ဒီေလာက္ အညွာလြယ္လြယ္နဲ႔ ယုံၾကည္ ၾကပုံမရပါဘူး။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ေလာေလာဆယ္ အရပ္သား အသြင္ေျပာင္းထားတဲ့ လူေကာင္းေတြထဲက တေယာက္ပါဆိုတဲ့ မီးရထားဝန္ၾကီး ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေဟာင္း ေအာင္မင္းဟာ ျမန္မာႏို္င္ငံနဲ႔ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံၾကား ေခါက္တုံ႔ ေခါက္ျပန္သြားျပီး ထင္ရွားတဲ့ အေဝးေရာက္ အတိုက္အခံေတြနဲ႔ ေတြ႔ဆုံေနပါတယ္။ သူနဲ႔ လတ္တေလာ ေတြ႔ဆုံၾကရသူေတြကေတာ့ သူ႔ရဲ့ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ေတြ စစ္အစိုးရ တင္းမာအုပ္စုလူဆိုးေတြဆီက ေျပာၾကတယ္လို႔ သူဆိုတဲ့ ညွိႏႈိင္းလိုစိတ္မရွိတဲ့ လကၡဏာေတြဆိုတာ နဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ျပီး သံသယ ၾကီးၾကီးဝင္ေနၾကပါတယ္။
ေအာင္မင္းဟာ ၁၉၈၃ ခုႏွစ္တုန္းက ရာထူးျဖဳတ္ခ်ခံခဲ့ရတဲ့ စစ္ေထာက္လွမ္းေရး မ်က္မွန္တင္ဦးရဲ့ တပည့္ဆိုတာကို သူတို႔ သတိျပဳမိၾက ပါတယ္။ မ်က္မွန္တင္ဦးကို အက်င့္ပ်က္ျခစားမႈေတြ အေၾကာင္းျပျပီး ရာထူးက ဖယ္ရွားခဲ့ေပမယ့္ သူဟာ အရင္ စစ္အာဏာရွင္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ၾကီး ေနဝင္းရဲ့ ေခါင္းေဆာင္မႈကို ျခိမ္းေျခာက္တဲ့ စင္ျပိဳင္ေထာင္တဲ့ လုပ္ရပ္ေတြေၾကာင့္သာ ဖယ္ရွားခံခဲ့ရတာက ပိုျဖစ္ဖို႔ မ်ားပါတယ္။
၁၉၈၃ ခုႏွစ္တုန္းက Far Eastern Economic Review မွာ အဂၤလိပ္သတင္းစာဆရာ ေရာ့ဒ္နီ တပ္စကာ က တင္ဦးနဲ႔ သူ႔ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးေတြ အေၾကာင္းကို အခုလို ေရးသားခဲ့ဖူးပါတယ္။ “သူတို႔ဟာ တျခား အျမင္က်ဥ္းတဲ့၊ တရားေသဆန္တဲ့ ျမန္မာေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြထက္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ အေၾကာင္းပိုသိသူေတြ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ သူတို႔ဟာ လက္ရွိ စစ္အစိုးရရဲ့ တင္းၾကပ္တဲ့ ကန္႔သတ္ခ်က္ေတြေအာက္မွာ ရွိေနပုံရေပမဲ့ သူတို႔ကို ႏိုင္ငံျခား သြားခြင့္ေပးထားတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံျခား သားေတြနဲ႔ လြတ္လြတ္လပ္လပ္ စကားေျပာခြင့္ေပးထားတယ္” လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။
ဒါေပမဲ့ သူတို႔ဟာလည္း သူတို႔ရဲ့ ရန္သူေတြ၊ ျပိဳင္ဘက္ေတြ အေပၚမွာ အင္မတန္အညွာတာကင္းရက္စက္ ျပီး အလြန္ပါးနပ္လိမၼာသူေတြ အျဖစ္ လူသိမ်ားပါတယ္။ မ်က္မွန္တင္ဦးကိုယ္တိုင္ဟာ စပိန္ႏိုင္ငံ ပစိဖိတ္ကြ်န္းစုေတြထဲက ကြ်န္းတကြ်န္းမွာ အေမရိကန္ စီအိုင္ေအ သင္တန္းကို တက္ေရာက္ခဲ့သူ တေယာက္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေအာင္မင္းဟာ ၁၉၈၃ ရွင္းလင္းပြဲမွာ တနည္းတဖုံက်န္ရစ္ခဲ့ျပီး ၁၉၉၂ ခုႏွစ္မွာ ျမန္မာ စစ္ေထာက္လွမ္းေရး ၂၁ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ကို ေရႊ႔ေျပာင္းခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ၂၀၀၀ ခုႏွစ္မွာ အမွတ္ ၆၆ ေျချမန္တပ္ရင္းကိုေရာက္ခဲ့ျပီး၊ ၂၀၀၁ ခုႏွစ္မွာ ျမန္မာစစ္တပ္ရဲ့ ေတာင္ပိုင္းတိုင္းမွဴးအျဖစ္ရာထူးတိုးျမွင့္ခံရပါတယ္။ ၂၀၀၃ ခုႏွစ္မွာေတာ့ အရင္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္သန္းေရႊစစ္အစိုးရ လက္ထက္မွာ မီးရထားဝန္ၾကီးျဖစ္လာပါတယ္။
ဒီေန႔ အျဖစ္အပ်က္ေတြကို ဆက္စပ္ၾကည့္ရင္ မဟာစီမံကိန္းမွာ ေရးသားထားတဲ့ စစ္အာဏာ သက္ဆိုးရွည္ေရး အစီအစဥ္မွာ ကာလရွည္ၾကာ ျပႆနာျဖစ္ခဲ့တဲ့ တိုင္းရင္းသားအေရးဟာ အဓိက ျပႆနာ ျဖစ္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။ စစ္အစိုးရ လက္ရွိ အာဏာလြန္ဆြဲပြဲ ဇာတ္လမ္းမွာ လူဆိုးအုပ္စုထဲကတေယာက္ဆိုသူ ကေတာ့ ေနာက္ထပ္ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေစ့စပ္ေဆြးေႏြးသူတေယာက္ျဖစ္တဲ့ ေအာင္ေသာင္း ပါ။ ဒီႏွစ္ထဲမွာ တရုတ္ႏိုင္ငံ အေနာက္ေတာင္ပိုင္းက ေရႊလီျမိဳ႔မွာ ကခ်င္သူပုန္နဲ႔ ေတြ႔ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့သူပါ။ သူဟာ အရင္ စက္မႈဝန္ၾကီးေဟာင္းျဖစ္ျပီး၊ ၂၀၀၃ ခုႏွစ္မွာ စုၾကည္နဲ႔ အေပါင္းအပါေတြကို အုပ္စုဖြဲ႔တိုက္ခိုက္ခဲ့လို႔ စုၾကည္ေထာက္ခံသူ အမ်ားအျပား ေသဆုံးဒဏ္ရာရခဲ့ၾကတဲ့ ဒီပဲယင္း အေရးအခင္းကို ေနာက္ကြယ္က စီစဥ္ခဲ့သူေတြထဲက တေယာက္လို႔ ထင္ျမင္ယူဆခံရသူျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ လူေကာင္းေအာင္မင္းဟာ ေရႊလီေဆြးေႏြးပြဲကို မတက္ခဲ့ပါဘူး။ ဒါေပမဲ့ သုံးသပ္သူတခ်ဳိ႔ကေတာ့ ေနာက္ပိုင္းမွာ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲ ပ်က္ျပားမယ့္ အေျခအေနေရာက္လာရင္ အေပ်ာ့လိုင္းခ်ဥ္းကပ္ပုံစံနဲ႔ ေအာင္မင္းက ဝင္ေရာက္ကယ္တင္လိမ့္မယ္လို႔ ထင္ျမင္ေနၾကပါတယ္။
အခုလို လူသိမ်ားထင္ရွားတဲ့ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြက အေသအခ်ာျပင္ဆင္ထားတဲ့ ေဆြးေႏြးေရး နည္းလမ္းေတြနဲ႔ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတာေတြကို ပုန္ကန္သူ တိုင္းရင္းသားေတြဘက္က လက္ခံလက္မခံဆိုတာကေတာ့ ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ရဦးမွာပါ။ ဖက္ဒရယ္မူကို အစိုးရဘက္က ထည့္ေတာင္ မစဥ္းစားဘဲ ေတာက္ေလ်ာက္တသမတ္တည္း ျငင္းဆန္ေနတဲ့ အခ်က္ဟာလည္း လက္နက္ကိုင္ အဖြဲ႔ေတြနဲ႔ သေဘာတူညီ ခ်က္ကို တာရွည္တည္တန္႔ဖို႔ မျဖစ္ႏိုင္တဲ့ အခ်က္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ၂၀၀၈ အေျခခံဥပေဒဟာလည္း စစ္တပ္ကို အဓိကထားျပီး ဗဟိုကခ်ဳပ္ကိုင္တဲ့ အစိုးရပုံသ႑န္ကို အေျခခံေရးသားထားပါတယ္။
ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ လတ္တေလာ ေျပာေနၾကတဲ့ “ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရး” ဆိုတာနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ျပီး အေပ်ာ္လြန္ေနတဲ့ကာလဟာ သိပ္ရွည္ၾကာမယ္မထင္ပါဘူး။ စစ္တပ္ကို လႊတ္ေတာ္ထဲမွာ တရားမဝင္ ဗီတိုအာဏာေတြ အလြန္အကြ်ံေပးထားတဲ့ လက္ရွိ အေျခခံဥပေဒကို ဖ်က္ရင္ဖ်က္၊ ဒါမွမဟုတ္ အမ်ားအျပားကို ျပင္ရင္ျပင္၊ အဲသလိုမွ မဟုတ္ရင္ တိုင္းရင္းသားျပႆနာဟာ ေျဖရွင္းလို႔ရမွာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ ဒါ့အျပင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ အေမရိကန္နဲ႔ တရုတ္တို႔ ယွဥ္ျပိဳင္ၾကရာ နယ္ေျမတခုသာျဖစ္လာခဲ့ရင္ေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဟာ ေရွ႔ေလွ်ာက္ေသခ်ာေပါက္ ပိုျပီး ဒုကၡေရာက္မွာပါ။ မဟာစီမံကိန္းမွာ ေအာင္ေက်ာ္လွသတိေပးခဲ့တဲ့ တရုတ္ အေမရိကန္ ျပႆနာဟာ အခုလက္ေတြ႔ ေပၚေပါက္ေနပါျပီ။
Credit : Ko Thaung
The cosmetic change in the traditionally military-run country is unmistakable. In recent months, it has become easier for ordinary citizens to access the Internet and local magazines and journals are able to publish articles on topics that would have been unthinkable only a year ago. Pictures of pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest, are now for sale in markets not only in the former capital Yangon but also in small upcountry towns.
The United States government, for more than two decades the fiercest critic of successive military-dominated regimes in Myanmar, promised enhanced engagement in exchange for "further reforms" immediately after Friday's prison release. As a first step, the US is going to send an ambassador to its embassy in Yangon, which has been headed by a charge d'affaires since Washington decided to downgrade relations with Myanmar in 1990 in response to a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.
Many Myanmar citizens undoubtedly welcome the easing of the extreme authoritarian pressure they have lived under as long as they can remember. But critics maintain the loosening is not tantamount to a "reform process", which would require changes in the country's fundamental power structure, and that the US may have other diplomatic objectives in mind over concerns for human rights and democracy.
Meanwhile, some Myanmar dissidents are beginning to ask, albeit in hushed tones, the hitherto unthinkable: is Suu Kyi being used by the Thein Sein's military-backed, civilianized government as a pawn in its efforts to break the country's long isolation from the West? And, has she come under pressure from the US and possibly other Western powers with a stake in Myanmar's future geopolitical role to strike a deal with her former military adversaries?
Less than a year ago, Suu Kyi was known to have said to visiting foreign diplomats that she was apprehensive about talking to the new government that assumed office after a blatantly rigged November 2010 election. At the time, she reportedly said that the main problem was the new constitution, which was adopted after an equally fraudulent referendum in May 2008 and guarantees the military 25% of the seats in parliament.
For instance, the charter's Chapter 12 lays out the complicated rules for constitutional amendments, which effectively give the military veto power over any proposed changes. The upper house currently consists of 168 elected representatives with a quarter, or 56 delegates, directly representing the defense services; the lower house is made up of 330 elected MPs and 110 appointed to represent the military. The ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), meanwhile, is widely viewed as a vehicle for the military's political interests.
Minor constitutional changes may be considered by the bicameral parliament if 20% of MPs submit a bill. However, a tangle of 104 clauses mean that major charter changes can not be made without the prior approval of more than 75% of all MPs, after which a nationwide referendum must be held where more than half of all eligible voters cast ballots.
This complicated procedure, coupled with Myanmar's record of holding bogus referendums - the first in 1973 for the 1974 constitution was as lacking in credibility as the one held in 2008 - make is virtually impossible to change those clauses, which in various ways and means legally safeguard the military's now indirect hold on power.
For instance, one of the first sections of the constitution guarantees the military's "national political leadership role of the State" and, in case of an "emergency", the "Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services has the right to take over and exercise State sovereign power" after consulting the president. "No legal action" can be taken against the military for what it does while exercising such emergency powers, according to the constitution.
Another clause bars anyone whose parents, spouse or children who "owe allegiance to a foreign power" from becoming president. Suu Kyi's late husband, Michael Aris, was a British citizen, as are their two sons. The military's right to appoint a quarter of all seats in what is otherwise an elected parliament is also guaranteed, as is military control of one-third of all seats in local assemblies.
In 2008, Myanmar's generals got the constitution they wanted and through rigged elections now controls a solid majority of all seats in the parliament. Consequently, they can now afford to make some minor political concessions in response to international pressure. Allowing MPs from Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) to take part in a by-election on April 1 for 40 seats in the lower house and six in the upper chamber left vacant by the appointment of ministers, will not affect Myanmar's fundamental power structure with the military at its apex.
Reversible reform
The semblance of reform, however, has improved Myanmar's standing in the international community, as are other steps expected to be taken by Thein Sein's government, including new laws allowing for limited public protests and the creation of labor unions.
Since the constitution bars Suu Kyi from becoming president, some observers speculate that if she wins a seat in parliament she will be appointed minister of health or education, two positions which she would consider important but will not give her substantial political power and certainly no influence over the military.
"She would be an excellent choice for a person to be sent abroad to solicit aid for health and education programs and to attend international AIDS conferences and the like," says a veteran Myanmar politician who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Few would doubt that Suu Kyi remains Myanmar's most popular politician - and for many the country's main hope for a better future. But for the first time critical voices of her role are also being heard. In an unusually candid interview with The Australian on January 6, Win Tin, one of the original founders of the NLD in 1988 who was imprisoned for 19 years for his beliefs, said that the "reforms" taking place in Myanmar "are a ploy by the country's dictatorship to seduce foreign governments and neutralize Aung San Suu Kyi".
Other dissidents - former political prisoners and leaders of local civil society groups - complain that Suu Kyi meets readily with one foreign visitor after another but has no time to see them. "One comment I hear frequently is, 'what was the NLD fighting for if Daw Suu [Aung San Suu Kyi] will run for the by-elections and by that accepting the 2008 constitution'?" lamented one non-governmental organization worker in Yangon.
Ongoing fighting between ethnic rebels and government forces are another point of division. "In particular the Kachin are disillusioned that there is no compassionate speech or letter [from Suu Kyi] to their community, although some of the Catholic Bishops have explicitly asked Daw Suu to send such a message," said one civil society activist. Since June last year, heavy fighting has been raging between government troops and the rebel Kachin Independence Army in the country's far north.
Tens of thousands of civilians have fled the fighting to the Chinese border, or taken refuge in churches and community halls in towns in the predominantly Christian state of the Union. Farmers have been forced to abandon their crops and most refugees are living as destitutes in border areas under constant threat of being pushed back by unsympathetic Chinese authorities.
Some critics argue that Suu Kyi has grown old and tired - she will turn 67 this year - and the present, slight opening, however flawed, may be her last chance to achieve her vision of a more democratic Myanmar. But it is equally plausible that Myanmar's close relationship with China, and, more menacingly, its military partnership with North Korea, have prompted Western powers to push her into accepting some kind of accommodation with Thein Sein's government. Without her engagement with the new regime, it would be hard for the US and European Union to justify a dramatic change in policy towards Myanmar.
When US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Thein Sein during her historic visit to Myanmar last December - the first by such a high-ranking US official in half a century - China was tellingly high on her diplomatic agenda. The first agenda item raised by Thein Sein during the meeting was the importance of Myanmar's relationship with China, which Clinton apparently did not object to. However, she emphasized that relations with the US would "if reforms maintain momentum" - thus leaving the door open for Myanmar to diversify its foreign relations.
After Washington decided in mid-January to establish full diplomatic ties with Myanmar, Clinton said the US "will further embrace" Myanmar if "the government releases all remaining political prisoners, ends violence against minorities and cuts military ties with North Korea". After her December visit, she said that the US would agree to and support assessment missions to Myanmar by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, a first step toward renewed multilateral lending for badly needed infrastructure.
Myanmar's staunchly nationalistic military may be willing to lessen its dependence on China, and even cut its ties with North Korea, provided the US and its allies can offer something substantial in return, including an eventual removal of economic sanctions. However, if one reads the 2008 constitution carefully, Myanmar will not become a genuine democracy any time soon, but rather a thinly disguised authoritarian state that the US and the West can cynically live with to counterbalance China's influence.
That is not what many pro-democracy activists, both at home and in exile, have been fighting for since the bloody, nationwide uprising against military-dominated rule in 1988, when thousands of protesters were mowed down by the military, and when they overwhelmingly voted for the NLD in the 1990 election, a democratic result that the military refused to honor. In the case of any future "emergency", the limited new freedoms that Myanmar's people are now enjoying can also be curtailed, perhaps next time by constitutional means rather than the barrel of a gun.
Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and author of several books on Burma/Myanmar, including Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Struggle for Democracy (Published in 2011). He is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific Media Services.
credit here
IF most Western pundits are to be believed, fundamental change is taking place in Burma.
After holding a seriously flawed referendum in May 2008 on a new constitution that gives the country's military controlling powers, and holding an election last November condemned by the West as rigged, Burma's new government has stunned the world by taking steps towards what appears to be more openness.
Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been freed from house arrest; she and new President Thein Sein have been meeting; strict censorship rules have been relaxed; and on Tuesday the release of thousands of prisoners began.
More importantly, Burma suspended a $US3.6 billion mega-dam joint project with China in the north of the country.
According to the view of the same Western observers, recent developments may also reflect a power struggle between "hardliners" and "reform-minded liberals" within the government and the military that controls it.
Free trial
But reality is far more complicated. Firstly, the new constitution and elections were not intended to change the basic power structure but to institutionalise it.
Once the new parliament and other institutions were in place, and the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party had secured an absolute parliamentary majority and formed a new, seemingly legitimate, government, concessions were expected.
Suu Kyi's release had been announced before the election, and there had been talks about prisoner releases and an amnesty for Burmese exiles.
The concessions went much further than that when the military discovered that Suu Kyi, despite her long house arrest, was as popular as ever. Nor had her party, the National League for Democracy, disappeared despite being dissolved in May last year.
At the same time, a powerful, popular movement was growing against the controversial dam project at Myitsone in the northern Kachin State. The dam would have flooded an area bigger than Singapore and 90 per cent of the electricity was to be exported to China.
And it would have seriously harmed the Irrawaddy River, the nation's economic as well as cultural artery. There was a potential for an upheaval that could have threatened the unity of the armed forces. The government had to act to prevent the public and elements of the military joining forces.
China has been Burma's closest economic, political and military ally since the pro-democracy uprising of 1988. But it has been an uneasy alliance, as many Burmese army officers have not forgotten that China for decades supported the insurgent Communist Party of Burma.
Even today, China maintains cordial relations with the United Wa State Army, a successor to the CPB, which in 1989 made a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese government.
Chinese duplicity was bad enough; robbing the country of its natural resources was seen as even worse. By suspending the controversial dam project, Thein Sein has taken the wind out of the sails of this movement and weathered the storm many were waiting for - at the same time as the suspension, not cancellation, of Myitsone leaves open the door for negotiations with China.
Thein Sein has skilfully played "the China Card" with the West.
In Washington, on September 29, Burmese Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin met Derek Mitchell, the newly appointed US co-ordinator on Burma; Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; and Michael Posner, a specialist in human rights.
The next day, the government decided to suspend the dam until 2015. At the same time, ongoing talks with Suu Kyi are meant to "tame" the NLD and persuade it to "return to the legal fold", as the government always terms it.
Some Rangoon-based sources even suggest the aim of the government could be to form a USDP-NLD coalition after the next, 2015 election. Consequently, the US is showing signs of softening its hard stance against Burma.
The US position will be eroded totally once the NLD is re-registered and all political prisoners are released. Then, sanctions are likely to be eased if not completely lifted. The EU will give in even earlier.
Apart from trying to neutralise the NLD, releasing prisoners and inviting emigres to return, the government is also attempting to revitalise the economy. Economic progress is seen as vital for regime survival, and to have US and EU sanctions lifted will serve that purpose.
In order to be "re-admitted" into the global community, and break its diplomatic and economic isolation from the West, Thein Sein's government is said to have set three other high-profile goals which would improve its international reputation: to host the Southeast Asian Games, which are scheduled to be held in Naypyidaw, Burma's new capital, in 2013; to assume the chairmanship of ASEAN in 2014; and the 2015 election.
It is likely to succeed in these endeavours, and the economy will most probably benefit as well from more interaction with and acceptance by the West.
Some economic liberalisation could also follow, but major political reforms are unlikely. The new constitution has enough safeguards to protect the military and its ultimate grip on power.
Despite the new honeymoon with the West, Burma is unlikely to shake off its dependence on China. And recent changes are unlikely to alter the country's fundamental power structure with the military effectively in command. The sad truth is that there is no "step-by-step" process in motion that would lead to real democracy in Burma.
Bertil Lintner is a Thailand-based correspondent for the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet and author of several books on Burma.
After holding a seriously flawed referendum in May 2008 on a new constitution that gives the country's military controlling powers, and holding an election last November condemned by the West as rigged, Burma's new government has stunned the world by taking steps towards what appears to be more openness.
Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been freed from house arrest; she and new President Thein Sein have been meeting; strict censorship rules have been relaxed; and on Tuesday the release of thousands of prisoners began.
More importantly, Burma suspended a $US3.6 billion mega-dam joint project with China in the north of the country.
According to the view of the same Western observers, recent developments may also reflect a power struggle between "hardliners" and "reform-minded liberals" within the government and the military that controls it.
Free trial
But reality is far more complicated. Firstly, the new constitution and elections were not intended to change the basic power structure but to institutionalise it.
Once the new parliament and other institutions were in place, and the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party had secured an absolute parliamentary majority and formed a new, seemingly legitimate, government, concessions were expected.
Suu Kyi's release had been announced before the election, and there had been talks about prisoner releases and an amnesty for Burmese exiles.
The concessions went much further than that when the military discovered that Suu Kyi, despite her long house arrest, was as popular as ever. Nor had her party, the National League for Democracy, disappeared despite being dissolved in May last year.
At the same time, a powerful, popular movement was growing against the controversial dam project at Myitsone in the northern Kachin State. The dam would have flooded an area bigger than Singapore and 90 per cent of the electricity was to be exported to China.
And it would have seriously harmed the Irrawaddy River, the nation's economic as well as cultural artery. There was a potential for an upheaval that could have threatened the unity of the armed forces. The government had to act to prevent the public and elements of the military joining forces.
China has been Burma's closest economic, political and military ally since the pro-democracy uprising of 1988. But it has been an uneasy alliance, as many Burmese army officers have not forgotten that China for decades supported the insurgent Communist Party of Burma.
Even today, China maintains cordial relations with the United Wa State Army, a successor to the CPB, which in 1989 made a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese government.
Chinese duplicity was bad enough; robbing the country of its natural resources was seen as even worse. By suspending the controversial dam project, Thein Sein has taken the wind out of the sails of this movement and weathered the storm many were waiting for - at the same time as the suspension, not cancellation, of Myitsone leaves open the door for negotiations with China.
Thein Sein has skilfully played "the China Card" with the West.
In Washington, on September 29, Burmese Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin met Derek Mitchell, the newly appointed US co-ordinator on Burma; Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; and Michael Posner, a specialist in human rights.
The next day, the government decided to suspend the dam until 2015. At the same time, ongoing talks with Suu Kyi are meant to "tame" the NLD and persuade it to "return to the legal fold", as the government always terms it.
Some Rangoon-based sources even suggest the aim of the government could be to form a USDP-NLD coalition after the next, 2015 election. Consequently, the US is showing signs of softening its hard stance against Burma.
The US position will be eroded totally once the NLD is re-registered and all political prisoners are released. Then, sanctions are likely to be eased if not completely lifted. The EU will give in even earlier.
Apart from trying to neutralise the NLD, releasing prisoners and inviting emigres to return, the government is also attempting to revitalise the economy. Economic progress is seen as vital for regime survival, and to have US and EU sanctions lifted will serve that purpose.
In order to be "re-admitted" into the global community, and break its diplomatic and economic isolation from the West, Thein Sein's government is said to have set three other high-profile goals which would improve its international reputation: to host the Southeast Asian Games, which are scheduled to be held in Naypyidaw, Burma's new capital, in 2013; to assume the chairmanship of ASEAN in 2014; and the 2015 election.
It is likely to succeed in these endeavours, and the economy will most probably benefit as well from more interaction with and acceptance by the West.
Some economic liberalisation could also follow, but major political reforms are unlikely. The new constitution has enough safeguards to protect the military and its ultimate grip on power.
Despite the new honeymoon with the West, Burma is unlikely to shake off its dependence on China. And recent changes are unlikely to alter the country's fundamental power structure with the military effectively in command. The sad truth is that there is no "step-by-step" process in motion that would lead to real democracy in Burma.
Bertil Lintner is a Thailand-based correspondent for the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet and author of several books on Burma.
Credit : Here
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