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YOU’D
have to give it to the Burmese junta to find the
argument for fending off the thinly veiled warnings from
its neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (Asean) to release Aung San Suu Kyi and other
political prisoners and carry out democratic reforms, as
the 40-year-old regional bloc stands in peril of
ridicule for finally forging a charter that it cannot
universally enforce on all members anyway.
To the
statement of the Philippines’ President Gloria Macapagal
Arroyo that the junta’s intransigence could imperil the
charter—because, right in Manila as an example, Congress
would expectedly balk at ratifying the charter if not
all Asean members are bound, in actual practice, by its
lofty aspirations—her Burmese counterpart asked for more
understanding, saying that, as the Asean neighbors know,
they are “new at this,” meaning, in the ways of
democracy. Now, that’s a thought.
Under
the arrangement, the charter would have to be ratified
by all 10 members, so a Philippine Senate refusing to
give its imprimatur could throw a monkey wrench into the
whole timetable.
While
that may be in the realm of the hypothetical now, it
could really pose a problem for the entire group and mar
the work of nearly three years involving some of the
best diplomats in the region, including the Philippines’
own Rosario Manalo, who was a strong intellectual
presence at the High-Level Task Force, to craft a
charter that befits Asean’s role and is useful to its
future.
Already,
the civil-society groups that have persevered in
hounding their respective countries’ diplomats and all
Asean forums have barely hidden their disappointment at
the outcome—a charter that is silent on sanctions and
which, while embodying high aspirations, does not
provide enough guidance on what the members can do to
those who make a mockery of such high ideals.
Ironically, this isn’t even a case of future crimes;
even when the charter was being conceived, debated and
finalized, the Burmese military had already engaged, and
still does, in a continuing violation of its peoples’
human rights as to render hollow all talk of democracy.
And yet,
the junta now feigns innocence in the ways of democracy.
It’s as if it were an entirely alien principle imposed
on a nation by neighbors who don’t know any better.
Well,
they should have thought of how “alien” or “different”
democracy is to them when they sought and got membership
in Asean more than a decade ago—with some endorsement
from leaders like Fidel V. Ramos, ironically a pillar of
people power in his country. The idea then was embodied
in that phrase called constructive engagement. That is,
that it’s better to have Burma inside the group and thus
presumably with a motivation to follow the community’s
rules than out of it. As experience shows, that did not
happen, and the junta just recently displayed how well
it can thumb its nose not only at the Asean but the rest
of the United Nations as well.
These
are the facts: in 1990 the junta called for elections,
but disallowed the winners—by landslide—from taking
their seats in parliament. The leader of that winning
party, Suu Kyi of the National League for Democracy, has
been in house arrest in various periods of the past 17
years, and Suu Kyi has yet to see the promise of her
fond hope fulfilled; she once said, “our time will
come.”
Meantime, Burma holds on to its seat in Asean to the
consternation of Europe and North America and peoples
everywhere who think it a waste that one country alone
can spoil the name of an entire bloc. To be fair to
Burma, it might find it hard to follow the “ways of
democracy” because it knows that many of those who
preach it are driven by megadoses of hypocrisy. On the
eve of this week’s Asean Leaders’ Summit, the US urged
Asean to suspend Burma’s membership in light of the
continuing crackdown on the fresh protests driven by
monks. The European Union reiterates it doesn’t want
Burma to sit at the table when talks of a free-trade
area are concluded. Yet, who can deny the US’s own
dismal record in respecting the rights of thousands of
citizens in the rubric of antiterrorism; or the huge
businesses of some of
Europe’s biggest concerns, in resource-rich
Burma?
Or even the continuing drama played out each day in the
Philippines, where thousands of people have been victims
of political killings and enforced disappearances, to a
level triggering a UN inquiry? A story exclusively
played up in this paper alluded to everyone’s fear about
being shut out of Burma’s huge natural gas—precious
resource in a world of increasingly scarce energy
supplies. Yes, everyone either has a material interest
in Burma or has its own skeleton in the closet of
democratic repression, and the junta knows that.
Charter
or no charter, therefore, expect this charade to keep
playing, as it has in the past nearly two decades: a
“road map” here, a UN envoy’s visit there; a neighbor’s
appeal here, a warning from a major foreign power there.
Meanwhile, the people of
Burma
will keep suffering, and they will soon realize that
while foreign friends and the wonders of technology can
help, they’ll still have to do most of the job
themselves. |
