------------------------ BurmaNet ------------------------ "Appropriate Information Technologies, Practical Strategies" ---------------------------------------------------------- The BurmaNet News: December 9, 1997 Issue #886 HEADLINES: ========== THE NATION: JUNTA OUSTS THREE FROM CHARTER-DRAFTING PANEL THE STRAITS TIMES: THAI PM PLANNING TO VISIT MYANMAR BKK POST: RE-IMAGED BURMA ------------------------------------------------------- THE NATION: JUNTA OUSTS THREE FROM CHARTER-DRAFTING PANEL December 8, 1997 Reuters RANGOON Burma's newly-named military government said yesterday it had removed three senior officials of the key National Convention Convening Commission (NCCC) in charge of drafting a new constitution for the country. A statement by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) said that NCCC chairman Lt Gen Myo Nyunt and vice-chairmen Lt Gen Maung Thint and Brig Gen Myo Thant had been replaced. Minister of Hotels and Tourism Maj Gen Saw Lwin was appointed the new NCCC chairman, while the minister of religious affairs, Maj Gen Sein Htwa, and minister of social welfare, Brig-Gen Pyi Sone were named vice chairmen. The three officials who were replaced formerly belonged to the State Law and Order Restoration Council (Slorc), the predecessor of the SPDC. The SPDC came into being on Nov 15. The SPDC, headed by Senior General and Prime Minister Than Shwe, has several old faces from Slorc in it, but some other military leaders and ministers have been left out. The SPDC is in the process of questioning officials of several ministries and government bodies following the junta's shake-up. The three NCCC officials who were removed had been moved by the SPDC earlier this month to a 19-member advisory group which according to local analysts is a lame duck panel riddled with rumours that its members are corrupt officials. The NCCC first convened in January 1993 when a total of 702 delegates appointed from various political parties, non-governmental organisations, ethnic groups and government officials attended a National Convention. Eighty-six delegates representing the major opposition National League for Democracy party led by Aung San Suu Kyi withdrew from it in September 1995, claiming it was a sham. The National Convention has been in recess since March 1996. **************************************************** THE STRAITS TIMES: THAI PM PLANNING TO VISIT MYANMAR December 8, 1997 AFP BANGKOK - Thai Premier Chuan Leekpai is planning to visit neighbouring Myanmar to help strengthen relations, Thailand's army commander was quoted as saying yesterday. Army chief General Chettha Thanajaro said he was liaising with Myanmar leaders to arrange for Mr Chuan's visit, the Bangkok Post reported. Mr Chuan, who was appointed to his second term as Prime Minister last month, did not make the customary trip to Myanmar when he was Premier from 1992-95 in what was seen as a rebuff to Yangon's military regime. Mr Ohn Gyaw, Myanmar's Foreign Minister, is due to attend a Thai-Myanmar joint commission meeting in Bangkok tomorrow and is expected to call on Mr Chuan. Thailand has promoted expanded contacts with Myanmar which in July was admitted into Asean. ****************************************************** BKK POST: RE-IMAGED BURMA December 6, 1997 OUT LOOK, MICHAEL SMITBIES FADED SPLENDOUR, GOLDEN PAST: URBAN IMAGES OF BURMA BY ELLEN CORWIN CANGI. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, KULAL LUMPUR. PP 100, MALAYSIAN RINGGIT 30. The introduction to this slim volume gives a potted history of Burma. After giving a nod to Mon cultural influences on King Anawrahta, the achievements of the other ethnic groups comprising the Union of Burma are virtually ignored. Thais will be interested to learn that after their capital had been plundered in 1767 by the Burmese "the Chinese intervened on behalf of the Thais at the last minute" and the balance of power was restored. One takes this as a misreading by the Dean of the American College in Singapore of Phraya Tak's part-Chinese ancestry, and the support he was given by the resident Teochiew trading community. However, the author tries to focus more oh life in the cities than their monuments, though it is singularly hard to do so for Pagan and Mandalay. So the old question of human sacrifices in Mandalay comes up again, with a total of 52 persons said to have been buried alive in 1857 to guard the royal city with their spirits. At least it was less than the 600 claimed as necessary by the court astrologers in 1880 to appease the offended nat. The British, though not yet in control of Mandalay, put a stop to that though "steamers headed south were crowded to suffocation' with hysterical Burmans" trying to escape being rounded up for sacrifice by Thibaw's palace guards. With the expulsion of Thibaw and his domineering queen in 1885, and the transfer of the capital to the south, Mandalay became as it remains, a quiet backwater, and unfortunately the wooden structures of the former royal palace rotted. Ms Cangi goes to town on Rangoon: The Brits "with myopic energy" turned it into a British Burman Town. They worried about such things as sanitation. They might have built a museum, but "crime, grinding poverty, and recurrent ethnic riots characterised life of most citizens in Lower Burma", as they probably always had done and as, though with differences of degree, they probably do not just in Burma but even for many in Bombay, Rio, Los Angeles and countless other cities. Yes, the colonials did provide education, and even set up a university in 1920. The millenarian leader Saya San was brought to his execution in 1930, "heavily guarded in handcuffs and leg irons" (as takes place in prisons in the region today). But they did nothing to promote democracy in the -nineteenth century as if any colonial power did. Their specific sin was that they "never attempted to educate the traditionally passive Burmans in the rights and responsibilities required to sustain and nurture democracy and republicanism." Ms Cangi takes leave of her senses here; whoever thought in the 1880s of such matters, in a colonial empire headed by a monarch, too? Viewing nineteenth century history with a republican optic of the late twentieth century does not lead to understanding. Ms Cangi gives us three different dates for Burmese independence (1943, 1947, and 1948), and shifts from measurements in metres in Pagan to feet for Mandalay. She distinguishes incomprehensibly between ''temples and pagodas." The Shans (tribesmen, of course) get it in the neck, Thibaw's "mother was a Shan, which for many explained his lack of character and selfdiscipline." The Mons gave the Burmese Buddhism and thereafter are ignored. The Arakanese were there to be conquered from time to time. The Karens, Kachins, Chins and so on are hardly mentioned. The book ends with the thought: "The Yangon which emerges from this period of history will be a thoroughly Burmese city." Perhaps it is. The book provides potted histories and descriptions of monuments most likely to be visited today. One wishes it had been more comprehensive and less anachronistically strident. ------------------------------------------------------