၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲလြန္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေရး ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲ ေဟာင္ေကာင္မွာ က်င္းပမည္

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Category: ျမန္မာ့ပညာေရးသတင္း

Published on Sunday, 08 January 2012 02:11

Written by ေမာကၡ

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၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲလြန္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေရး ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲကို ဇန္န၀ါရီ ၂၆ ႏွင္႔ ၂၇ တြင္ ႏွစ္ရက္ ေဟာင္ေကာင္ စီးတီးတကၠသိုလ္တြင္ က်င္းပသြားမည္ ျဖစ္သည္။  

တက္ေရာက္မည့္ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ႀကီးအမ်ားစုမွာ အီးဂရက္စ္မွ ကြယ္လြန္သူ ေဒါက္တာေန၀င္းေမာင္ ႏွင္႔ နီးစပ္သူ အမ်ားစုျဖစ္တာေၾကာင္႔၊ သူတို႔ ခ်စ္ေသာ ေဒါက္တာေန၀င္းေမာင္ အတြက္ ႏွစ္မိနစ္တာ ၿငိမ္သက္စြာ ဆုေတာင္းေမတၱာပို႔သမွႈလည္း ပါ၀င္ႏိုင္ေကာင္းသည္ဟု အစည္းအေ၀းတက္ေရာက္ဖို႔ တက္ၾကြေနသူ တစ္ဦးက ေမာကၡကို ထင္ျမင္ခ်က္ေပးခဲ႔သည္။

Conference on “Myanmar after 2010 Elections”

Jointly organized by

Southeast Asia Research Centre (SEARC), CityU and

Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), Germany

Date:        26 and 27 January 2012

Time:        9:00 am – 5:00pm

Venue:    Multi-media Conference Room, City University of Hong Kong

The conference will examine the socio-political and economic changes that have taken place in the wake of the 2010 elections and the prospect for further political liberalization in the context of the changes that have take placed. 

(The Southeast Asia Research Centre organized a workshop on Problems with the National Reconciliation Process in Myanmar in 2009. The 2009 workshop examined Myanmar politics under the military rule. This 2012 conference can be considered a sequel to the previous workshop.)

Speakers

1. 1.Robert Taylor, Visiting Professional Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Singapore
2. 2.Ko Ko Hlaing, Presidential Adviser, Government of Myanmar
3. 3.Thu Wai, Chairman, Democrat Party, Myanmar
4. 4.Thihan Myo-Nyun, Attorney and Legal Scholar, School of Law, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, USA
5. 5.Tom Crammer, Researcher, Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherland
6. 6.Kyaw Yin Hlaing, Associate Director of SEARC and Assistant Professor of Asian and International Studies, CityU
7. 7.David Taw, Foreign Relations Officer, Karen national Union, Chiang Mai, Thailand
8. 8.U Wun Tha, Chief Editor, Myanmar Khit Journal, Yangon, Myanmar
9. 9.Hla Maung Shwe, Vice-President, Myanmar Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Yangon, Myanmar
10. 10.Myint Su, Freelance Consultant and Community Development Worker, Yangon, Myanmar
11. 11.Zaw Zaw Han, Civil Society Activist and Founder and CEO of the Forever Group, Yangon, Myanmar
12. 12.Winston Set Aung, Consultant and Presidential Adviser, Government of Myanmar
13. 13.Tin Htut Oo, Consultant, Yangon, Myanmar
14. 14.Wa Wa Tun, President, Myanmar Women Entrepreneur Association, Yangon, Myanmar
15. 15.Tin Maung Maung Than, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore
16. 16.Kyee Myint, Retired Director General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Myanmar
17. 17.Li Chanyang, Director, Southeast Asia Centre, Yunnan University, Kunming, China
18. 18.Nyunt Maung Shein, Retired Director-General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Myanmar
19. 19.Mary Callahan, University of Washington, USA
20. 20.Andreas List, Ambassador, European Union
21. 21.Thaung Tun, Retired Ambassador and Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Discussants

1. 22.U Ye Htut, Ministry of Information
2. 23.Myo Zaw Aung, Secretary, National League for Democracy
3. 24.Thuya (Zarganar), Human Rights Activist
4. 25.Maung Maung Thar Myint, Civil Society, Activist
5. 26.Aung Than Oo, Civil Society, Activist
6. 27.Sai Zaya Shan, Secretary, Nationalities Democracy Party
7. 28.U U Hla Saw, Secretary, Rakhine Nationalities Democracy Party
8. 29.U Chit khaing, President, Myanmar Rice Merchants Association

Conference Overview

On March 30, 2011, Myanmar’s long ruling military government, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), handed power to the new government that came into being in the wake of the SPDC-sponsored elections held in November 2010. Because all administrative and legislative bodies both at the central and local levels were controlled by members of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), many political activists and Myanmar watchers did not expect much hanges under the new government. However, on August 19, 2011, to the surprise of many,  President Thein Sein met pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in his official residence. Two days before, the president invited exile activists to return to the country.  When Aung San Suu Kyi attended the government-sponsored conference on macro-economic reforms, she was welcome as a very very important person (VVIP). Several senior government officials were very friendly to her and many well-known cronies of senior government officials who in the past stayed away from members of the opposition were lining up to get a photo opportunity with the lady.

Aung San Suu Kyi publicly stated that she was very encouraged by the meeting and that she had trust in the president’s determination to bring positive political changes to the country.  On the issue of democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi also noted in a speech given to her party members that positive political change could take place under the new government. For the first time in its history, the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) issued a statement with positive comments about the government a few days after their leader met with President Thein Sein. While some major EU countries welcomed the meeting, the United Nations’ human rights rapporteur Mr Quintana noted in the statement he issued at the end of his recent visit to Myanmar there were “real opportunities for positive and meaningful developments to improve the human rights situation and bring about a genuine transition to democracy”.  On the other hand, several exile activists retain a lot of reservations about the sincerity of the president. Some went so far as to say that what the president did was little more than a publicity stance and that there was no difference between the new government and its predecessor.

When President Thein Sein suspended the controversial Myitsone dam project (jointly developed with Chinese construction companies) in response of the rejection of the project by civil society groups, the US and EU governments praised the new administration. Even some exile activists began to opine that the new Myanmar government should be given a chance to prove that it is different from its predecessor.

Myanmar has long defied some major social science theories and the expectations of both social scientists and journalists. Although some political transition theories speculated that military governments would not last very long, the military regimes in Myanmar lasted more than twenty years. At the same time, although several Myanmar watchers had argued that the political liberalization undertaken by the military council that ruled the country between 1988 and 2011 would be meaningless, recent changes have indicated that real political change might be in the air. Therefore, it is a high time to examine how the emergence of the new government has affected Myanmar politics, economy, civil society space and foreign relations and how the recent political changes, especially the relations between the government and the opposition should be understood.

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