Iraq war, now playing in Yangon

The other pressure group for democracy, the European Union, is incapacitated by the fact that the lead in this group has been taken by Britain which is seen as a full partner in the Iraqi debacle.

Myanmar’s march to freedom is peculiarly meshed with India’s. Subhash Chandra Bose shifted the headquarters of the Indian National Army to Yangon. It was from the grave of the exiled Moghul King Bahadur Shah Zafar that ‘‘Subhash Babu’’ gave the ‘‘Dilli chalo’’ call.

Myanmar’s leaders like Gen Aung San (Su Kyi’s father) came into contact with Bose as well as Nehru. In 1948 Gen Aung San was assassinated and U Nu led his country into Bandung and the Non Aligned meet and the first elections in 1958. But in 1962 Gen Ne Win staged a military coup and closed the country from the world for 25 years on the North Korean model.

Impulses for change came, first, from China when Deng Xiao Peng launched the four modernisations in 1978. By the late 80s glasnost and perestroika combined with Reagan’s offensive altered Moscow to the point that it was packing its bags in Afghanistan. A surge for freedom gathered momentum in India’s neighbourhood. Nepal held elections.

Younger army leaders set aside Ne Win in 1988. This was also the year when Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Myanmar from Cambridge. The youth rallied around the daughter of one of Myanmar’s heroes. In the 1990 general elections, Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won 80 per cent of the seats.

Began the backtracking. The election was not to a parliament, Gen Khin Nyunt argued. There cannot be a parliament without a constitution. The elections, therefore, were to a constituent assembly, the regime said.

The country was opening up, very slowly. The west, having won the Cold War, had the legitimacy to press for change. Around this time, even New Delhi, under V.P. Singh as PM, threw its weight behind the pro democracy movement.

It goes to the credit of J.N. Dixit who, as P.V. Narasimha Rao’s foreign secretary, steadied India’s policy towards Myanmar on a non intrusive basis. New Delhi’s relations with China were on the mend and India, having multiple interests in Myanmar, would do business with the rulers in Yangon. Call it ambivalence or commitment, New Delhi conferred the Nehru award on Su Kyi in 1996 causing a stir in Yangon. The international community, ASEAN now in the forefront, kept up the pressure for openness and for Su Kyi’s release.

In 1993 the constituent assembly (National Convention) met but ended inconclusively in 1996 because the NLD walked out. There was no debate, just a unilateral approval of key clauses, the NLD complained. Consistent with two steps forward and one back, Myanmar joined ASEAN in 1997. Now, it is in the queue to be ASEAN chairman in 2006.

So, in August 2003 a roadmap to democracy was set out. The first step in this roadmap is the drafting of the new constitution. A National Convention has been in session outside Yangon since May.

Clearly, the NLD, which established its popularity in 1990, should be part of the Convention. The regime welcomes the NLD but not its conditions. Most important is that Aung San Suu Kyi is released. Ever since she returned from the UK 15 years ago, she has been under detention for over 12 years.

Until last year the impact of sanctions combined with western pressure was working. The regime too needed to gauge if Su Kyi’s charisma had faded since 1990. So, in May 2003, she was released. Mass upsurge caused the regime to lose nerve. She was again placed under house arrest.

Now the National Convention is going ahead with the drafting of the constitution. Of the 107 participants, only 26 are victors of the 1990 poll. The NLD’s argument that the constitution is an arbitrary draft will be cleverly circumvented: the draft will be ratified by a referendum. And that process will see the regime through to the ASEAN chairmanship in 2006.

A pity the US and UK have, in the eyes of Yangon’s power elite, compromised their moral right in Baghdad to press for Su Kyi’s release in Yangon. But the new regime in New Delhi has spoken up for the remarkable freedom fighter again. In fact, Natwar Singh may well have raised the issue with his Myanmar counterpart during their recent meeting in Beijing.