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POLITICS-BURMA: Resistance To Constitutional Referendum Builds Up

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Feb 11 2008 (IPS) - ‘’This is the declaration of war by the military regime against the people of Burma,’’ says Nilar Thein in a statement released Monday. They are strong words from a woman on the run and forced into hiding for over five months in the military-ruled country.

‘’We are ready to stand up to intimidation. We are ready to confront the Burmese military junta and its violence and brutality,’’ continues the statement by the 35-year-old pro-democracy activist. It was also signed by two others, Tun Myint Aung and Soe Htun, who, like Nilar, are taking refuge in a safehouse in Rangoon to avoid arrest by the junta.

It is a statement that carries significant political weight in a nation that has been under the grip of successive military dictatorships for over 45 years. For the trio who issued it belong to the ‘88 Generation,’ a highly respected group of former university student leaders who led a pro-democracy uprising that was brutally crushed by the military in August 1988. Nilar and the others paid a heavy price for their political beliefs after that. They were imprisoned for years in Burmese jails; nine years, in the case of Nilar.

The ominous tone in the statement was the strongest reaction among Burmese pro-democracy groups and opposition parties to a sudden announcement over the weekend by the junta that it plans to conduct a referendum in May to approve a new constitution. The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the junta is officially known, also announced plans to have ‘’multi-party democracy elections’’ in 2010.

‘’The upcoming constitutional referendum will be a major battle field between the military regime, which wants to rule the country forever, and the people of Burma, who want to be free from military rule,’’ warned the two-page statement by the ‘88 Generation Students’. ‘’We urge the people of Burma to reject the military junta’s sponsored constitution in the upcoming referendum.’’

And the Burmese junta will not be able to take such words lightly, since this group of former university students have demonstrated their capacity – even in the face of harsh restrictions – to galvanise public support challenging the junta. It was the ‘88 Generation that first took to the streets to protest the 500 percent spike in oil prices in mid-August, triggering a peaceful demonstration of thousands of Buddhist monks and civilians in September, which was brutally crushed by the junta.

Such a repetition of force leading up to the May referendum may not be easy, say analysts, since the regime is hoping to use the plebiscite as a way of reducing the international pressure it is under following the September crackdown. ‘’The statement shows how frustrated the people are, and any attempt to silence this public anger will not help the junta,’’ says Win Min, a Burmese expert on national security at Payap University, based in Thailand’s northern town of Chiang Mai. ‘’The junta needs to hold the referendum to get the heat from the international community off its back.’’

The strong words by the ‘88 Generation only confirm what the junta will be up against in the coming weeks, a ‘’period of unease and tension,’’ he added during an interview. ‘’The junta may have hoped otherwise, trying to rush through the referendum before the opposition gets organised.’’

The junta’s quest to introduce the country’s third constitution is rooted in an effort to marginalise the pro-democracy groups and to perpetuate the power of the military. The process began in 1993, when the junta set up a national convention to draft the constitution. That came after the generals refused to recognise the results of a 1990 parliamentary election, where the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) won 81 percent of the 485 seats up for grabs.

This 14-year exercise to draft the charter, which ended last year, was marked by the harsh restrictions imposed on the over 1,000 members to the convention who had been hand-picked by the junta. Notorious among them was law No 5/96, which prohibited participants from criticising the draft of the charter that had been written by the SPDC. Violators were threatened with a 20-year prison term.

The NLD, led by Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, had refused to participate under such threatening conditions. It also had reservations about some key features of the constitution, one of which was a clause to reserve 25 percent of all seats in the new parliament to military officers appointed by the commander-in-chief.

The prospect of Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years, emerging as the democratically elected leader of the country during the proposed 2010 election is also remote. For the junta, fearing her universal popularity, has a clause in the constitution that forbids a Burmese married to a foreigner – Suu Kyi was married to a British academic, who died in 1999 – from running for the post of president.

‘’Even now, very few people know what the new constitution guarantees, since the public have been denied access to the draft document in the same way they were shut out from the national convention,’’ Zaw Min, spokesman for the Democratic Party for a New Society, a political party banned by the junta, told IPS. ‘’The climate today is worse than when Burma had its last referendum in 1974 to approve our second constitution. There was a little more openness then.’’

International support for such an oppressive political exercise will further inflame feelings inside Burma, says Debbie Stothard of ALTSEAN, a regional human rights lobby campaigning for political freedom in Burma. ‘’If the international community sits back and welcomes this referendum without knowing how the constitution was drafted and the prevailing restrictions, it will reinforce the feeling among the Burmese that they have been let down again.’’

The ‘88 Generation’s warning to the junta is more than a hint of the rage from a people who have had enough of the junta’s oppression and deception to stay in power, she explained in an interview. ‘’This is a do or die time for them.’’