Thai-Burma Relations At Risk Over Aung San Suu Kyi Jailing

[Plus]

No, but that's what's going to happen anyway, so we just try to make the best of it as well.

Generals won't be able to keep it under complete control forever. First elections - ok, second, third - control will be slipping away.

Pity NLD decided to sideline itself for good, without ANY chance of getting into politics.

We could have had that "roadmap" implemented ten years ago if they were a bit more realistic about their principles. Burma wouild have been better off by now.

[BSJ]

Free and fair elections in Burma. Free and fair for who? Surely you don't mean the beaten down average citizen?

[eurozhongguo]

The Chinese are more important to the Burmese than the whole of the rest of the world since the Chinese finances the exitence of Burma. They are always trying to influence all of the poorer countries of South East Asia such as building roads with Chinese labour and Chinese money in Laos and Cambodia and insisting that Laos build a Chinese-only city in the north of their country and that Cambodia use and promote the Chinese language. Nothing will ever change until the Communists are toppled in China and this might never happen because most Chinese are too cowardice to confront the government, something that should be dead simple with their 1.3 billion population. Instead, they won't hear a word against the government and even support all their government's policies to ban foreigners from cheap guesthouses etc. They say it's in case we have an accident. It doesn't matter that we have one in a 5-star hotel though. The Chinese are not Czechs or Hungarians and Hu Jintao is not Mikhail Gorbachev.

[scorecard]

No, but that's what's going to happen anyway, so we just try to make the best of it as well.

Generals won't be able to keep it under complete control forever. First elections - ok, second, third - control will be slipping away.

Pity NLD decided to sideline itself for good, without ANY chance of getting into politics.

We could have had that "roadmap" implemented ten years ago if they were a bit more realistic about their principles. Burma wouild have been better off by now.

QUOTE from above: "......Generals won't be able to keep it under complete control forever. First elections - ok, second, third - control will be slipping away. ...."

You really believe that? Whats's going to make 'control slip away'? What factor would that be? Any gains by the people will be trampled on quickly and ruthlessly with deaths and torture, etc.

My take is that the thug generals will never relinguish their total control and allow the country to have free and fair elections and return to total democracy for a very simple and very obvious reason:

- They would be charged with hundreds of counts of: abuse of power, thousand of deaths, some in very extreme and dispicable circumstances, and they would be found guilty without any doubt and they would receive the harshest possible punishment provided under Burmese law (probably hanging is that's available under the law). And/or;

- They would be taken to the International Court of Justice in the Hague and charged with multiple crimes against humanity and found guilty and be sentenced to the rest of their lives behind bars.

You really think their going to hand power back to the people?

The only way this will change is by strong and total intervention by the UN or similar.

[Plus]

Nothing like that is going to happen, ever. At most generals will move to exile.

What WILL happen is that the country will soon start seeing new laws passed by elected legislature, and the government will be held accountable to the parliament, at least to a degree. Those representatives are not going to be freely elected, but they will be voted in by people, and probably not all candidates will be selected by the junta, too. And NLD will be soon forgotten completely unless they step up to the plate themselves.

It's not some Narnia land where one evil general keeps the whole country under a magic spell. There are millions and millions of people there who learned to live and work under junta government - build their lives, raise families, run businesses etc. Most of what they want from the government or parliament isn't connected to democracy or politics at all.

[blakegeee]

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/78/support-...troops-to-burma

Lets get some signatures on this guys. I don't think any "action" against this junta could make things worse.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/78/support-...troops-to-burma