Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Burma: Democracy triumphs over dictators!

BBC.com (text); Oo Win, Maya, CC Liu, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly
Finally, our wishes are fulfilled! Daw "The Lady" Aung San Suu Kyi will take office! (WQ)
Burmese Theravada Buddhist monks hold Burmese and American flags (telegraph.co.uk).

"The Lady" Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, with more power than Burma's puppet president (essentially installed by the military junta, which is still in power behind the scenes), addresses a crowd of supporters (BBC).
Ecstatic: a few seats have official results, but NLD supporters celebrate in Rangoon (BBC).
 
Democratic opposition [to military rulers] confident of victory
BBC.com, Nov. 9, 2015, Asia Section
The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet supports Suu Kyi.
The BBC's Jonah Fisher reports from an Aung San Suu Kyi party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), rally where supporters say they feel confident of victory.

IN BRIEF: (WQ) Burma's opposition NLD says it is confident of electoral victory in the first openly contested national election in 25 years. Burma is a 95% Theravada Buddhist country in Southeast Asia next to Thailand. It's name was changed to "Myanmar" (which the occupying Colonial British pronounced Burma) by the illegitimate military junta that has ruled with an iron fist for nearly 25 years, which many rightly suspect are still in power from behind the scenes from their new capital Naypidaw).

The NSA's favorite recipe book: 1984
Burma and its military rulers served as the basis of George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty Four. A dictatorship led by Big Brother or "Asian Hitler" (as Ellen Page calls him) General Than Shwe pulled off a military coup when Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of beloved Burmese national hero Aung San, won democratic elections.

Ellen Page's photo of Dictator Than Shwe
She was placed under house arrest and never allowed to take office. She was imprisoned from time to time and threatened with being barred if she left the country, although she married and had children with a British citizen. The story of this national catastrophe which had reverberations around the world -- but turned around by Pres. Obama and Hillary Clinton for the sake of USA hegemony over neighboring China's influence in the region -- was dramatized in "Beyond Rangoon" with Patricia Arquette:


(JBF Entertainment/Neil Hollander Film) WARNING: Gore and carnage during Saffron Revolution/people's uprising for Aung San Suu Kyi and justice. The right-wing military dictatorship -- which has ruled Burma ever since a coup that wrested power from beloved, democratically-elected Suu Kyi -- reacted with police state violence.

Burma's elections
Democrats love fake democracies over right-wing dictatorships.  U.S. Pres. Barry Obama kisses Burmese opposition-leader Aung San Suu Kyi after making a speech at her residence in Rangoon, Nov. 19, 2012 (blogs.ft.com).
Suu Kyi serving in Burmese parliament
  • "Burma VJ" - a video journalist (VJ) during the Saffron Revolution documents junta's abuse of Buddhist monks who rose up against illegitimate military leaders.
(BBC) An NLD spokesman said it expected to win about 70% of seats. Party leader Aung San Suu Kyi said: "I think you all have the idea of the results."
 
Official results have been released for only 54 seats, with 48 won by the NLD.
 
The military-backed Union Solidarity Development Party (USDP) [formerly known as SLORC, the "State Law and Order Restoration Committee"] has been in power since 2011 [with SLORC holding de facto power much longer.]
 
The NLD says it has won 44 out of Rangoon's 45 seats in the lower house, and 70% of seats nationally, but this has not been confirmed. [SLORC changed Rangoon to "Yangon."]
 
More than 6,000 candidates from more than 90 parties were vying for 498 seats in both houses of parliament. [Burma uses a British style parliamentary system when not ruled by iron-fisted military dictators, but of course this is only the velvet glove concealing the iron fist that still characterizes Myanmar's real movers and shakers.] 
    Aung San Suu Kyi is Burma's Nelson Mandela, the US's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Here she is seen at Nat'l League for Democracy HQ in Rangoon in Nov. 2010 (Soe Than Win/Getty Images).

    Will Ferrell, Ellen Page, Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh, and Mr. Jennifer Aniston (who's a man)

    NLD spokesman Win Htein said it had "accumulated proof that there are some deeds by the authorities which are against the election regulations."
     
    The acting chairman of the USDP [in an amazing confession on the BBC's U.S. broadcast] has told BBC Burmese that he has lost his own seat in the constituency of Hinthada to the NLD -- seen as a key indicator of election results.
     
    "We have to find out the reason why we lost," U Htay Oo said. "However, we do accept the results without any reservations. We still don't know the final results for sure."
     
    Daw Aung San Suu Kyi making news in Burma's Parliament after earlier elections (AFP).
     
    Earlier, Ms. Suu Kyi addressed a crowd at the NLD's headquarters in Rangoon, urging them to be patient.
     
    A quarter of the parliamentary seats are reserved for the army, and for the NLD to have the winning majority it will need at least two-thirds of the contested seats.
     
    The BBC's Jonah Fisher in Rangoon says that while this is a very big ask, it is by no means impossible if the party, which is popular in urban areas, manages to win seats in rural areas which tend to be dominated by [non-Burman] ethnic minorities.

    But Ms. Suu Kyi cannot [technically] become president because the constitution [which was altered by the dictatorship before officially handing power to its democratic puppets] bars anyone with foreign children from holding the post. Her two sons, with her late husband, are British.
     
    The BBC correspondent says that if the NLD win, it will face difficulties in [restoring] the constitution on its own as the document still gives the military considerable power, and the party [NLD] would most likely nominate someone else to be president. Ms. Suu Kyi [in another shocking admission] has said she would be "above the president."
    Burma in the center of Southeast Asia, beneath Tibet, Bhutan, and Himalayas.
     
    For now no one is crying foul over the slow release of results. Aung San Suu Kyi and her party are being patient, confident that they're on the brink of a historic win.
     
    Results have to be verified at both a regional and national level so there's a fair amount of bureaucracy involved. [Former U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter and 10,000 monitors are on hand to insure a clean election.]

    That has not stopped them declaring their own results. To the delight of the crowd the NLD announced sweeping victories across Rangoon, Mon State, and the Irrawaddy Delta.
     
    The percentages involved would make even an African despot blush. It mattered little to the crowd that they weren't official figures.
     
    Over the next few days the steady flow of real results is expected to continue. That slow pace may give people time to come to terms with what is looking like being a massive political change.
    Tens of thousands of officials and volunteers have been counting the votes, first in each of the 50,000 polling stations, then tallying them in constituency offices of the Election Commission.
     
    In one of the earliest and most significant known results, the ruling party's Shwe Mann, who is speaker of the lower house of parliament, conceded defeat in his constituency to the NLD candidate.
     
    The full results will not be known for at least a few days, and the president will only be chosen in February or possibly later.
     
    International observers say the voting process was generally smooth, with some isolated irregularities. And hundreds of thousands of people -- including [much abused] minority Rohingya Muslims [who were subject to ethnic cleansing by the military-run government] -- were also denied voting rights, raising concerns about the fairness of the poll.
     
    US Secretary of State John Kerry hailed the elections as a step towards democracy, but added that they were far from perfect.

    Big turnout
    About 30 million people were eligible to vote in Sunday's election in Burma, which is also known as Myanmar.
    Turnout has been estimated at about 80%, in what were the first national elections since a nominally civilian government took power in 2011.

    "I'm really happy because from what I heard the NLD is winning. I couldn't sleep until 11 or 12 because I was looking everywhere for results," San Win, a 40-year-old newspaper vendor, told the AP news agency. Share this story: About sharing

    Are you in Burma? How are you affected by the issues raised in this story? Please email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk with your experiences. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:

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