Vote for Than Shwe

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JK04Ae02.html

By Muhammad Cohen

HONG KONG - Despite the record voter turnout forecast for Tuesday in the United States presidential elections, it's easy to understand why Americans may be tired of the campaign. After all, it began way back when US stocks and property seemed like good investments. The campaign blew in with the political fresh air of a woman and an African-American each making appealing bids for the presidency but concludes with too much focus on a fringe female who'd do for women what Clarence Thomas has done for blacks.

Perhaps you've grown fatigued with the candidates, even though Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain flashed real allure to overcome standing-room-only fields to capture their



party nominations. Obama beat Hillary Clinton, whose anointment seemed inevitable. Now he's acquired some of Clinton's air of inevitability, losing freshness that made him so appealing initially.

McCain has always been the straight-talker, the guy who would rather be right than liked, and the torture victim who stood up against torture. But he's been stretching the truth with tortured readings of his opponents' positions since January, now calling Obama un-American for supporting progressive taxation. He also keeps insisting Sarah Palin is ready to be president. Perhaps it's unavoidable that candidates who spend nearly two years on the campaign trail sound and act like candidates.



Two wars and more
If you don't like the candidates, consider the issues. The US is fighting two wars on the other side of the world that cost taxpayers nearly US$500 million a day, plus priceless respect and admiration. The world's only superpower faces a nuclear armed rogue dictator in North Korea; nuclear armed neighbors India and Pakistan that have fought four wars in 60 years and both now believe they have backing in Washington; gas-rich Russia is looking to regain influence over former Soviet satellites; Iran is anxious to produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel, and China is holding so many billions in US Treasury securities that its financial power is a political weapon.

At home, America is mired in its worst financial crisis in 80 years and exporting its toxins worldwide. Healthcare costs threaten to bankrupt business, government and families. Fully 35 years after the first Arab oil embargo, this year's oil price spike finally renewed concern over America's energy and greenhouse gas profligacy. On these issues and more, from taxation to education, McCain and Obama offer radically different solutions.

Maybe you've soured on the campaigning. The race began with a frontrunner trying to extend one political dynasty and ends with an underdog desperately distancing himself from another. Since its winning streak in February that clinched the nomination, the Obama side has played defense. It broke a promise to accept public financing and has used its groundbreaking Internet reach not to stir the public imagination for Obama, but to raise funds in huge amounts, supporting a relentless television assault that includes negative advertising, outspending not just McCain but some of America's top brands. If the election doesn't pan out, the Illinois senator is positioned to launch a clothing line or travel website - "Your Obama holiday includes ... "

Kitchen sinking
The McCain campaign picked up the Clinton strategy of throwing the kitchen sink at Obama, with Joe the Plumber added to connect the faucet. It's also picked up that campaign's lack of discipline and unity, and added even more name calling and half-truths about its opponents and, lately, the other half of the ticket. While Clinton eventually found a successful voice as a fighter for working people, McCain goes to polling day still searching.

Although racism and ageism have raised their heads - as Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin does over Alaska, according to Governor Palin - things could have gotten much uglier. To the credit of all, the enduring phrases of this campaign will be: "the 3am phone call", "Yes, we can, "You betcha" and "Spread the wealth", rather than "God damn America" and f-bombs on the Senate floor. Still, you may be reluctant to vote for a candidate who picked Palin as his vice president or who has shown himself more ready to duck a tough scrap than fight the good fight.

So if you're having trouble bringing yourself to vote for McCain or Obama, then vote for Than Shwe. In case you don't recognize the name, Than Shwe is the head of Myanmar's military junta, once known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council, or SLORC. I'm not suggesting that you write in Than's name on your presidential ballot. Instead, if you're thinking of skipping the voting booth on Tuesday, please consider Than.

Thought W was bad?
Than leads the State Peace and Development Council cabal that keeps Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest and refuses to recognize her party's landslide victory in Myanmar's 1990 elections. Since then, the junta has imprisoned thousands, moved the national capital to a remote site to insulate itself from the pesky populace, conscripted an estimated 800,000 civilians into forced labor projects, brutally suppressed anti-government demonstrations, including beating Buddhist monks last year, and prevented international and internal aid from reaching victims of Typhoon Nargis last May, a calamity that left more than 130,000 people dead and up to a million homeless.

When you don't vote, you're agreeing with Than Shwe and dictators all over the world who proclaim democracy is a farce. Shamefully, while ordinary Burmese, Chinese, Cubans, Saudis, Syrians, North Koreans, Yemenis and Zimbabweans take big risks to express their dissent and can only dream of electing their leaders, millions of Americans can't be bothered to exercise their franchise. Turnout in the 2004 US presidential election was 60.7%, the highest figure since 1968. According to the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, that robust turnout meant 78 million eligible voters stayed away from the polls on Election Day 2004.

Each one of those 78 million no-shows bolsters arguments that democracy doesn't work, that Than Shwe or his political bedfellow North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong-il is right and Thomas Jefferson is wrong. After all, even in America, the dictators and their cronies laugh, 78 million people don't vote. No-shows have outnumbered the votes for any candidate ever, meaning the real winner of every presidential election in America history has been "I don't care" in a rout.

So if you're having trouble convincing yourself to cast a ballot that says Obama or McCain is right, then vote to prove Than Shwe wrong, and relegate "I don't care" to a richly deserved last place finish in the 2008 tally. Oppressed people everywhere will thank you.

Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America's story to the world as a US diplomat and is author of Hong Kong On Air (www.hongkongonair.com), a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance and cheap lingerie.

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