April 4, 2012

SOUTHEAST ASIAN LEADERS CALL FOR END TO MYANMAR SANCTIONS

[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.