GOOD MORNING MYANMAR…
December 20th, 2009
One sure way to defeat a political movement is to out live it, to litterally watch your opposition go geratric and disappear. The State Peace and Develompment Council (aka, Myanmar’s military dictators) have done a good job, so far, of implementing such a stratedgy. Aung San Suu Kyi has other ideas.
From 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 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 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.
Suu Kyi clearly understands the challenge, and under the cover of visiting with sick friends, she was able to let her elders know that the party can no longer afford to rely on their leadership, that new blood is needed.
“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,” said a Bangkok-based European diplomat on condition of anonymity, 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.
Tyrants always fall. The question is simply when.
[...] Back in December I wrote about Aung San Suu Kyi’s meeting with the more senior (literally) members of the National League for Democracy’s leadership to explore how new, more vigorous, blood might be brought into the organization before this fall’s elections. Now, nine new members have been added. [...]
[...] the first time with its eight men and one woman who are the newest members. The CEC expanded after NLD Secretary Aung San Suu Kyi encouraged its three senior members to bring new blood into the aging [...]