Myanmar's Suu Kyi party needs new blood: analysts
by Rachel O'Brien – Sun Dec 20, 1:30 am ET
BANGKOK (AFP) – Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi faces an urgent challenge to shake up her party's ranks, analysts say, after a rare meeting with her colleagues exposed a weak and ageing leadership team.
Faced with national polls next year and their leader still in detention, members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) also need to resolve ideological differences within the party, they said.
The military junta, which has ruled Myanmar with an iron fist since 1962, allowed the democracy icon to leave her prison home Wednesday to pay respects to three ailing senior members of her political party, and she used the opportunity to ask their permission to ring in changes.
Party chairman Aung Shwe, 92, secretary Lwin, 85, and central executive committee (CEC) member Lun Tin, 89, approved Suu Kyi's unprecedented request to "reorganise" the CEC, Lwin said.
At 64, Suu Kyi is the youngest of the 11-member committee, while nine are in their 80s and 90s and most of them are said to be in bad health. Related article: China's vice president in Myanmar for talks
The old guard have disagreed with younger members over party policies, including whether or not to contest polls scheduled for 2010, with many of the new generation favouring a more pragmatic approach.
"It's a make or break point for the NLD," said a Bangkok-based European diplomat on condition of anonymity. "There are obviously many hardliners in the committee who are perhaps looking to the past more than the future."
The party is yet to decide if it will take part in the elections, which critics fear are a sham designed to legitimise the junta's grip on power.
But the diplomat said the latest development showed Suu Kyi "has given her signal that she wants them to reorganise and she wants the party to get ready".
"At the moment there's an amazing lack of vision and knowledge when it comes to the economic situation, the ethnic issue -- all the key Burma challenges," the diplomat said, using Myanmar's former name and referring to tensions with minority groups.
Suu Kyi has spent most of the last 20 years in detention and calls for changes have been coming ever since her first period of freedom 14 years ago, said Derek Tonkin, chairman of the UK-based Network Myanmar.
"Since then a lot of people say she ought to have applied herself to the reorganisation of the party more than political campaigns," he said.
But Win Min, an activist and scholar in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, said new membership had been stifled by fear of the authorities.
"It may be difficult to recruit new blood at the grassroots level because of the restrictions and intimidation by the military," he said.
In August, following a prison trial, Suu Kyi was ordered to spend another 18 months in detention.
The sentence sparked an international furore as it effectively keeps her off the stage for the 2010 elections, which will be Myanmar's first since 1990, when the junta refused to recognise the NLD's landslide win.
Following moves in recent months by the United States and European Union towards a policy of engagement with Myanmar, Suu Kyi has pursued greater dialogue with the government.
She has written twice to junta chief Than Shwe, once offering her help in getting sanctions lifted and later seeking a meeting with him, while she has been allowed three meetings with the government liaison officer since October.
But her plea for talks with the other CEC members, which would be necessary to implement changes to the party, has not yet been granted.
One member, 68-year-old Khin Maung Swe, told AFP a place would be kept for loyal senior colleagues.
"It is certain that we will reorganise the committee, but we cannot say the time-frame.. .. We cannot neglect our senior CEC members if they want to serve," he said.
Although the NLD's fate largely remains in the hands of the junta, the Bangkok-based diplomat said the party members are partly to blame for their "incapacity to rejuvenate themselves".
"If they don't get this right they will be remembered for being full of good intentions but all their sacrifices will be in vain, and I think Aung San Suu Kyi had grasped that," he said.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Myanmar's Suu Kyi party needs new blood: analysts
US Message to Burma: 'Engagement' Must Bring Results
US Message to Burma: 'Engagement' Must Bring Results
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By WAI MOE Tuesday, December 22, 2009
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The Burmese junta could face tougher US financial sanctions if Washington's new policy of direct engagement with the regime fails to produce results.
That's the message contained in recent remarks by legislators in Washington and US diplomats in Asia. It was also highlighted in a report by an Associated Press correspondent, who said: “The Obama administration has already a powerful economic weapon if talks with Myanmar [Burma] fail to achieve democratic reform: pressuring banks to avoid doing business [with the Burmese regime.]”
The agency report said the US Congress had already approved powers enabling the Administration to act against banks doing business with Burma.
The Administration's new policy on Burma links sanctions with direct engagement. The Burmese regime has, in effect, been served notice that sanctions will continue as long as no progress is scored in the contacts now taking place between US and junta officials.
This “carrot and stick” policy is the subject of wide discussion among US diplomats in Southeast Asia. Some senior US diplomats in the region told The Irrawaddy recently that if the junta generals believe engagement with Washington is giving them legitimacy they are totally wrong.
One diplomat said if the engagement policy produces no results within one year, further US actions are possible.
Some critics of the new policy point out that a similar approach followed by the US toward North Korea for more than 15 years had failed to prevent Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
The US diplomat said, however: “The Burma issue is quite different from North Korea. All in Washington know the US cannot engage with the junta without result.”
The US announced the conclusion of its Burma policy review on September 28. On the following day, Kurt Campbell, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, met with a Burmese delegation led by U Thaung, a former Burmese ambassador to Washington who is currently the minister of national planning.
In early November, Campbell paid a landmark visit to Burma, where he met Burmese Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as opposition and ethnic leaders.
While directly engaging with the junta, the US continues to monitor business contacts closely. On Dec. 16, the US Treasury Department announced it was fining the Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse AG US $536 million for working with countries on the US sanctions list, including Burma. The fine is the biggest in the history of the department’s office of foreign assets control.
“The great majority of the transactions involved Iran, although there were also transactions that appear to have violated US sanctions on Sudan, Libya, Burma, Cuba, and the former Liberian regime of Charles Taylor,” the US Treasury Department announced.
In September, the US-based watchdog Earthrights International accused two Singapore-based banks, the Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) and DBS Group (previously known as the Development Bank of Singapore) as “offshore repositories” for the Burmese junta’s revenues from the Yadana gas project. The junta has earned at least $5 billion so far from the project.
Burma observers suspect that the Burmese generals and their cronies have lodged many millions of dollars in financial institutions in Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Dubai.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
Obama has powerful tool to pressure Myanmar
http://www.thedaily star.net/ newDesign/ latest_news. php?nid=21238
Obama has powerful tool to pressure Myanmar
FILE - In this Nov. 15, 2009 file photo, from left, Myanmar's Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and US President Barack Obama, prepare to take their seats for a multilateral meeting with ASEAN-10 members in SingapoAP, Washington
If talks with Myanmar over democratic reforms fail, the Obama administration could tie up large amounts of money that the country's ruling generals stash in international banks from the sale of natural gas.
So far the administration has been hesitant to go that route.
But pressuring banks to avoid doing business with Myanmar's leaders could be a powerful economic weapon — one that already is being used elsewhere. It's an approach, for example, that has been used to try to push North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions.
Congress already has provided the power for the administration to go after the banks and some rights groups want President Barack Obama to use it right away, or at least if direct talks fail.
US officials have just started face-to-face negotiations and want to give them more time to show results. Imposing the banking sanctions would be expensive and time-consuming, and Myanmar isn't a top priority on a crowded foreign policy agenda that includes Afghanistan and Iran.
Still, the administration has warned of tougher action if engagement breaks down with Myanmar, also known as Burma. And the mere threat could add force to the US negotiating position.
"We will reserve the option of tightening sanctions on the regime and its supporters to respond to events in Burma," Obama's top diplomat for East Asia, Kurt Campbell, told lawmakers in September.
Myanmar has one of the most repressive governments in the world and has been controlled by the military since 1962. For years, the United States has used punishing sanctions to try to force change on the country, with little success. Former President George W. Bush's administration favored shunning Myanmar, and Bush's wife, Laura, and many in Congress were strong advocates of the nascent democracy movement there.
Now, the Obama administration has reversed the isolation policy in favor of engagement, which it hopes will persuade the generals to grant greater freedoms to opposition parties and minorities and to free political prisoners.
Myanmar has since made a few symbolic gestures of good will, letting detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi meet with Campbell, for instance, and releasing some political prisoners. At the same time, it has continued to persecute ethnic minorities, journalists and student activists.
Obama himself spoke of a possibly stronger position on Myanmar in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. There will be engagement and diplomacy with Myanmar, he said, "but there must be consequences when those things fail."
Activists say financial measures that hinder Myanmar's ruling generals' ability to access the international banking system might do what broader economic sanctions have failed to do.
"What the Burmese government values is not its commerce with the outside world but the financial proceeds of that commerce," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "Once the Burmese government deposits the checks in its bank accounts, there's a lot the United States government can do to prevent that money from being used in the international banking system."
Treasury officials have targeted 40 people and 44 entities since the Myanmar junta killed and arrested protesters during demonstrations in 2007. Being added to the sanctions list prevents people from making transactions in the banking system of the United States.
But a 2008 law grants the Treasury Department authority to impose conditions on banking relationships, meaning sanctions could affect activities of international banks.
Myanmar has lucrative natural gas deals with its neighbors and with some European and US companies, with revenues going into foreign banks. Under its new authority, the US can let these banks know it has concerns about their association with Myanmar that could hurt these banks' ability to work with US financial institutions, said Jennifer Quigley, advocacy director for the US Campaign for Burma.
Supporters of the banking sanctions often raise North Korea, saying that the United States effectively froze the North out of the international banking system in 2005, hurting leader Kim Jong Il.
For the moment, the Obama administration is urging patience as it pursues talks.
Next year's elections in Myanmar will provide a good look at the junta's intentions. A big question will be whether high-level US-Myanmar talks lead to true participation by minorities and opposition groups or merely let the generals consolidate power.
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