Will There Be National Reconciliation In Burma

Will there be NATIONAL RECONCILIATION in Burma? No one in the right mind could deny Burma owed colossal amount of gratitude to Bogyoke Aung San for his sacrifices. We all could hardly overcome the unfathomable remorse from his untimely demise. Again, no one in the right mind could deny the fact that he was one of the main architects who founded Burma Army that has reached the current formidable stature in the region.

But the poignant point is that his only daughter Aung San Su Kyi, time and again, is put under house arrest for several years by the army that her father helped founded. If we just hone in our minds on Bogyoke Aung San and raise a question: “how would he feel to witness that the army he had helped raised is putting her one and only daughter under long house arrest”? Is it not too cruel or insolent or is it not amount to slapping the face of the one who we owed debts of gratitude much? Besides, articles in the Burmese newspapers run by the junta, of course, they were written by individual independent writers, not junta’s cronies, and, one of the main themes of the articles is that: “the crow of the hen will not bring the dawn” or in Burmese “Kje’ Ma tun lou. mou: ma lin: boo” depicting Aung San Su Kyi being woman could not help steer the country. It is arguable that would the crow of the rooster sure to bring dawn? There are several Hens in our neighboring countries as well as in Europe, and in the United States taking the role of bringing the dawns to their respective countries through their crows. In India Madam Sonia Gandhi has taken up the role of the matriarch once held by Indira Gandhi. Soniaji had brought back the ruling Congress Party to regain the current stature; Bangladesh had been ruled by two Ladies alternately; Sri Lanka was once under MotherDaughter governments; Madame Bhutto was elected as the Prime Minister of male-dominant Pakistan until the Pakistan military toppled her unfairly; New Zealand has female Prime Minister;

Germany has female Chancellor; the chance of seeing Madame Segolene Royal as the president of France that would have been the first ever woman president of France was narrowly missed; Ms. Nancy Pelosi has become the first female Speaker of the US Congress; the U.S. State Department has been under three lady Secretaries of State; Britain has a lady as the foreign minister and United Kingdom was once under Iron Lady Mrs. Thatcher for more than a decade; France had Madame Michelle as the Minister of Defense; Norway had Ms. Kristin Krohn Devold, as the Defense Minister; Madame Tansu Ciller was once the Prime Minister of Turkey to name a few Hens that have brought dawn with their crows and some might bring dawn if they are allowed to crow. If Aung San Su Kyi could not bring dawn this would be a personal loss and people could remove her through ballot box if democracy is restored as promised, but, holding her under detention for so long has become a national as well as international cause unnecessarily. In the male dominant Latin America, Argentina has first female minister of defense, Ms. Nilda Garre who announced recently that “the rules of secrecy cannot be transformed into an obstacle to truth and justice” that concerned the former military officers could no longer use the cloak of state secrecy laws as an excuse not to testify about illegal abductions, torture and disappearances under junta rule; Chile’s President Madame Michelle Bachelet, she herself was former minister of defense, has selected Madame Vivianne Blanlot as her Defense Minister. Vivianne was booed loudly when she went as the government envoy to the military funeral for ex-dictator Pinochet; she did not even winced a muscle but declared “I am the one who is in charge”, the next day she stripped Pinochet’s grandson of his army capacity for defending Pinochet’s iron-fisted rule at his funeral eulogy; Uruguay’s defense minister Ms. Azucena Berruti sacked her army chief last year for unauthorized meetings with political foes of the president; Ecuador had Ms. Guadalupe Larriva as the minister of defense and she was one of the seven women in a cabinet of 17; Colombia had Ms. Martha Lucia Ramirez as the minister of defense but resigned after feuding with the generals; these were the Hens in the Machismo Latin America where they no longer consider the Hens are the softies. These countries have proven themselves that their countries are no longer sexist. There was once Daw Aung San Su Kyi announced that she and the junta, the then SLORC, had reached some understanding and “as the other party has not revealed she would also follow suit” but she urged the people to have trust in her according to the news report. But that was foiled after her British husband visited soon after her announcement, and, after his return from Rangoon he declared at the Don Muang airport, Bangkok that “there is no understanding between the junta and my wife”; that was the end of that episode. Now the influential husband is dead, so the process

of discussion or negotiation or what-so-ever could probably be restarted without any foreign intrigues? Daw Aung San Su Kyi was once barred from visiting places in the country. Her trips to Siriam, Bassein and Mandalay were all forcefully barred. But later on she was allowed to make a tour de force of the entire country with full permission or official connivance from the junta?

Something went wrong at some point, quite unknown up to this point, when her motorcade was attacked at De Pai Yinn and since then she has been incarcerated until now. Only after that incident the public have the full view or knowledge how deep the two sides had reached a cordial relationship and understanding when the photographs of the State Dinner given to Aung San Su Kyi attended by top members of the junta and the NLD EC; State sponsored tour of the structural development at certain areas exclusively for Aung San Su Kyi and her top Party Executives, etc. were published in the State-run newspapers.

The two sides had more than once walked on the friendship path and it is a general belief of the masses that it could be done once more that could lead to national unity. A prominent person from Rangoon pointed: “we all are breathing not as of birthright but because we are allowed to breath by the

junta”. If that is the case, the junta is the principal institution that is fully responsible to rekindle the national unity through national reconciliation. No matter what, it is obvious that the Senior General is the supremo who has the absolute authority [The’ u: hsan bain], and no magnanimity could be initiated from any one but him. He could forge national reconciliation if he wishes, as many believe. The most important issue to tackle at this juncture is how to preserve the Union? By hook or by crook, the defragmentation of the Union must be prevented, and, military alone would not serve the purpose. The country needs political solution. Without the genuine support of the political leaders the efforts of the junta would not bear fruits; so also, without the support of the Armed Forces no political institution could forge any political progress. Many have said “there would be an enormous explosion or implosion against military rule unless the energy of the people could be channeled into economic productivity”. Let us prevent that eminent fury, and let us hope that soon the junta would offer olive branch to the political institutions to channel the energy of the masses into economic productivity. Sadly enough, thinking about Aung San Su Kyi reminds a story as told by Premier Zhou Enlai of the Peoples’ Republic of China quite sometimes ago that was revealed by Khun Sirin Phathanothai in her book “The Dragon’s Pearl”: ‘A man was on a long journey and after a time he ran out of food. He struggled on, but there was nothing to eat, and he was becoming desperate. Finally he met a family on the road, and he asked them for some bread. The old lady in the family gave him three mantou, which was all she had. The man was still hungry, though, and barely paused to express any thanks. Then he passed another house by the road and went in and asked for food. The people there gave him half of a bun. Now he was full and felt satisfied for the first time in a long while. That half burn saved his life, he said, thanking the family profusely’. Khun Sirin was another Hen who was one of the conduits in forging the friendship bridge between the Peoples’ Republic of China and Thailand since she was a minor. Let us, for the sake of our beloved country, re-examine our history. We would find Bogyoke Aung San as “the old lady in the family who gave us three mantou, which was all he had”. Maung Thar Kyaw