The Aung San Suu Kyi– NLD (National League for Democracy) triumph is a big forward step but two inherited problems remain. First, 25% of parliamentary seats are reserved for khaki clad thugs who will also appoint three ministers including defence. It will take time and tactical sagacity, but until the political interference and the power of the army are destroyed, Burma will live in the shadow of a return to brutality and dictatorship. Secondly, a junta imposed piece of junk called a constitution decrees that if your children are foreigners you are debarred from the presidency! Loony chauvinism and dictatorship go hand in hand everywhere!
But there is a third self-inflicted defect. Suu Kyi is no Gandhiji or Mandela; she is silent on the genocide of the Rohingya people in Rakine Province. Burma has two million Muslim Rohingyas (4% of the 55 million population). Hundreds of Rohingyas have been killed and 140,000 forced to flee, but the Nobel Laureate has kept silent. Is it because to have spoken against genocide of a minority would have been a vote loser? If this was all, she would be no different from our reviled politicians and bearers of Lanka’s primitive post-independence zeitgeist. Déjà vu for us Lankans!
For more information - Visit here.
No comments:
Post a Comment