[Representatives of the Karen ethnic group, who have waged
one of the world’s longest insurgencies against the central government in Myanmar,
restarted negotiations on a cease-fire on Wednesday, part of a recently
launched effort by the government reach out to the country’s many minority
groups. An initial cease-fire agreement signed in January between the
government and one faction of the Karen National Union was disputed by some of
the group’s leaders. The current round of talks are scheduled to extend into
next week.]
 |
Adam Ferguson for The New York Times
Visitors toured the ancient golden Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar, on Sunday, the day of national parliamentary elections. |
YANGON, Myanmar —
Western countries should lift sanctions on Myanmar “immediately” in light of
“significant positive developments” in the country, Southeast Asian leaders
said in a joint statement on Wednesday.
At the close of a summit meeting in Cambodia, leaders from
the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations declared that last weekend’s by-elections in
Myanmar were “free, fair and transparent” and said they represented a
“significant step towards further democratization.”
“We called for the lifting of all sanctions on Myanmar
immediately in order to contribute positively to the democratic process and
economic development in that country,” the leaders said in their joint statement.
The United States and European Union have imposed multiple
layers of trade and investment restrictions during the past decade and a half.
Sunday’s by-elections, a test of Myanmar’s budding democratic reforms, have led
to a review of the punitive measures, which were imposed after numerous
crackdowns on pro-democracy forces. The European Union will take up the matter
later this month.
Leaders in the United States Congress, which has purview
over the issue of sanctions, have said the treatment of ethnic minorities will
also be taken into account when deciding whether to rescind the trade and
investment restrictions.
Representatives of the Karen ethnic group, who have waged
one of the world’s longest insurgencies against the central government in Myanmar,
restarted negotiations on a cease-fire on Wednesday, part of a recently
launched effort by the government reach out to the country’s many minority
groups. An initial cease-fire agreement signed in January between the
government and one faction of the Karen National Union was disputed by some of
the group’s leaders. The current round of talks are scheduled to extend into
next week.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has long opposed
sanctions against Myanmar but Wednesday’s call for their immediate removal was
more emphatic than previous statements from the group.
State media in Myanmar on Wednesday published the final list
of winners in Sunday’s election. The opposition party led by Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi won 43 seats in Parliament, while the ruling party and a smaller
ethnic-based party won one seat each. The ruling party, the Union Solidarity
and Development Party, is backed by the military. Their victory in the single
seat came after the main opposition candidate was barred from standing because
of a breach of electoral rules involving the citizenship of his parents.
The landslide by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National
League for Democracy, does not change the balance of power in the two houses of
Parliament, which together have more than 600 representatives, but it carries
strong symbolism and serves as a barometer of public support for the opposition
after years of oppression.
U Thein Sein, the president of Myanmar, was present at the
meeting in Cambodia and was congratulated by other leaders for his handling of
the elections, according to Indonesia’s foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa.
“This is a tremendous change in the dynamics nowadays,” Mr.
Natalegawa said, according to The Associated Press. “Normally the Myanmar issue
is discussed as a problem, but now it’s seen as very much different.”
Myanmar is scheduled to take over the annual rotating
chairmanship of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2014.
GROUPS ACTUALLYPLANNING A ‘COUP’ AGAINST INDIA’S CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
[Two separate
military units moved unexpectedly towards Delhi between the evening of January
16 and the following morning, the Indian Express said, forcing the central
government to issue a “terror alert.” To halt the movement of the units, the
traffic police were called in and instructed to “carefully check all vehicles
on the highways leading to Delhi. The objective was to slow down traffic,” the
paper said.]
An Indian Express
article
Wednesday said that a military exercise on fog preparedness this January scared
Delhi’s central government, leaving it “spooked as never before in peace time.”
Two separate
military units moved unexpectedly towards Delhi between the evening of January
16 and the following morning, the Indian Express said, forcing the central
government to issue a “terror alert.” To halt the movement of the units, the
traffic police were called in and instructed to “carefully check all vehicles
on the highways leading to Delhi. The objective was to slow down traffic,” the
paper said.
“Nobody is using the
“C” word to imply anything other than ‘curious,’“ the paper reported, referring
to the word “coup.” The Ministry of Defense now seems to think it was “a false
alarm,” caused by the Army’s failure to follow Standard Operating Procedures,
the paper reported.
Within hours of the
story appearing, government
officials and military personnel were denying there was ever any alarm,
while debate about what the story actually meant raged between pundits,
journalists, politicians and everyone else on Twitter.
Yes, the idea of a
military-led coup in India seems far-fetched.
But, maybe it should
come as no surprise that the government is a bit nervous about an overthrow
attempt. After all, a number of groups are marching, literally or figuratively,
towards central Delhi, with the aim of ousting the Congress-led United
Progressive Alliance, or at least halting some of its activities.
Here’s a quick
rundown on the groups currently advancing on the central government:
The “Third
Front:”
Talk of increased
coordination between India’s regional political parties has only increased
after the Congress Party and Congress’s biggest rival fared poorly in recent
assembly elections. The “country needs a third front, which is secular and
anti-corruption,” Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said
in March, adding he had already spoken to West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee,
Tamil Nadu’s J. Jayalalithaa and Telugu Desam Party leader N. Chandrababu
Naidu.
The
Vodafone-led Foreign Investors Alliance:
So-called “regressive,
retrograde” proposals in India’s latest budget have sparked a storm of
outrage from foreign companies, trade groups and overseas investors. Right now
the outrage has manifest itself mainly in letter-writing
campaigns and behind-the-scenes harassment of Finance Ministry officials, but
the next logical step is a foreign-investment retreat, which could cripple
India’s already slowing economy.
Watch out for
unexpected tactical manoeuvrings from a splinter group led by Christopher Hohn,
feisty hedge fund manager from The Children’s Investment Fund, who is suing
Coal India, a government-run company, for mispricing coal and the failure
to stop rampant theft, among other issues.
The
Anti-Corruption Movement, 2.0:
While Anna Hazare
and his colleagues may have lost steam since the height of their
anti-corruption protests last summer, there’s no reason to believe the public
is any happier about corruption now. Eruption of new scandals, in areas from highways
to defense spending, may fuel to a different type of grass-roots movement. Mr.
Hazare, meanwhile, has not
given up.
Maoist
guerrillas:
Despite aggressive
talk from the Congress Party about routing the Maoists, also known as
Naxalites, from the great swathes of central and eastern India under their
control, they are still present here.
And here.
And here.
“We do not have a ready solution,” for the Maoist problem, Union Home secretary
R.K.
Singh said this week.
The Bharatiya
Janata Party, or BJP:
Already present in
Delhi. Not currently considered a major threat.
