Farouk, you're egocentric
Source : Myo Win, Bangkok Post
Perhaps Omar Farouk of Darwin was too preoccupied with anti-American hypocrisy. Or he might be too fat with pro-junta opportunism when he tried to aim one stone at two heads, viz, the Western policy makers and Burma's NLD leaders (Postbag, Sept 1). Had he been sufficiently reasonable, as he seemingly assumed, he would have realised that all his words of wisdom were nothing more than a pseudo-advocacy favouring military rulers thereby giving an eggshell protection over its latest but not the last oppression against their own people who dared to oppose.
As he correctly mentioned, the democratically-elected government along with one of earliest democratic establishments in Southeast Asia was demolished once and for all in Burma in 1962. The military has since notoriously wiped out all reputable democratic figures as well as nipped those younger generations inspired with different ideology in the bud. Two generations have passed and it would be too imaginative to expect crystal-clear history in today's democracy elements in Burma.
Nor would it be so wise to point out the world powers' changing attitudes towards a specific issue without reflecting other global developments.
A Burmese dictator wining and dining with the US president in 1965 should not be the reason why the present US government should be scoffed at for supporting democratic changes in Burma. The fact is more distinguished when the same dictator and his successors effectively pulled the country down from a leading to least developed status within two decades and let her drift further to level zero in the new millennium.Worse still, they shamelessly deny the result of the election they themselves sponsored.
Some of today's prominent oppositionists may have their hands stained with blood.What's in it? If people like them to pay for their crimes,let them be tried in an orderly and democratic manner when justice prevails.
Even the internationally acclaimed Aung San Suu Kyi should not be exempted for that matter (do not mix this with the current junta's accusations under their homemade slingshot laws). The point is to set a genuine political system that assures every citizen of his/her basic rights and the freedom to apply them. No dictator in any form is qualified for this task. A case in point was the denial by the junta of the NLD's right to organise even a trip.
The people of Burma are poor, for they have been made so. They are not stupid to not know who is a friend and who is not. And they deserve more than egocentric rhetoric.