Release of Aung San Suu Kyi: A New Hope for Burma

On November 13, 2010, Burmese generals surprised the democratic supporters around the world with the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate and pro-democracy leader of Burma. Her release was warmly welcomed by People of Burma with tears of joy. The release of Aung San Suu Kyi also brings a new hope for democracy and national reconciliation in Burma.

After her release, private or general discussions took place on the political matters of Future Burma among the political activists, political analysts and ordinary citizens. Some critics view that the decision of the military regime could be a starting point for democratization process. On the contrary, some argue that Burma's democratic transition is in no way guaranteed by Aung San Suu Kyi's Release. Some have expressed their great concerns about her safety by taking the scenario of Pakistan democratic leader, Benazir Bhutto. These opposing views and concerns point out the following questions:

-Will the decision of the release of Aung San Suu Kyi by the military generals be actually a starting point for a new chapter of the history of Burma?
-Will there be a probability of any assassination attempts on Aung San Suu Kyi?
-Will the release of Aung San Suu Kyi actually bring a new hope for political dialogue and the end of prolonged and inconclusive political struggle in Burma?



Burma: A country with intra-state conflicts
For more than five decades, Burma has been entrenched in political and armed conflict between the repressive ruling military regime, political opponents, and ethnic groups. The ruling military generals committed grave breaches of the Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949, by the acts of wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and taking civilians as hostages in armed conflicts with ethnic minority groups.

The ruling military regime also violate the laws or customs of war such as wanton destruction of villages, attack or bombardment of undefended villages, seizure of, destruction or willful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments as well as the plunder of public or private property. Thousands of villages were destroyed as part of the military campaigns against the ethnic groups. For several decades, crimes against humanity were committed by the junta against the civilian population. Burmese prisons are full of political prisoners.

Persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds were taken place. Monasteries were
raided. Churches were burnt down. Monks were shot dead. Women political activists were
raped or threatened by some forms of sexual violence. Rape was used a weapon of war in
armed conflict zones. These acts result in the displacement of millions of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

Gravely concerned at the continuous violations of human rights in Burma, the Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution 1992/583 on 3 March 1992 to nominate a special rapporteur to establish direct contacts with the military regime and with the people of Burma, including political leaders deprived of their liberty, their families and their lawyers, with a view to examining the situation of human rights in Burma and following any progress made towards the transfer of power to a civilian Government and the drafting of a new constitution, the lifting of restrictions on personal freedoms and the restoration of human rights in Burma. Since then, various UN special envoys, rapporteurs including the UN Secretary-General have visited Burma several times to urge the military regime for all party-inclusive, transparent and national reconciliation.

National Reconciliation and Aung San Suu Kyi
As the political and armed conflicts were entrenched between the repressive military regime, political opponents and ethnic nationalities within the context of constitutional crisis and democracy movement, a 'Tripartite Dialogue' among three parties: the military regime, pro-democracy forces (NLD) and the ethnic nationalities, was recommended to resolve Burma's constitutional crisis, create national reconciliation and initialize the move toward democratization. It highlights the possibility of restoration of trust and confidence and mutual reconciliation after a prolonged inconclusive political struggle through negotiation process and conflict management.

In all conflict situations, the role of Track I leaders who move forward with preparations is an important requirement to generate the political support or 'will' for a joint solution. Aung San Suu Kyi fulfils this requirement by calling for dialogue with the junta several times. Some critics argue that Aung San Suu Kyi's party (NLD) was only interested in negotiation as a means to provide diplomatic cover. In fact, Aung San Suu Kyi and her party have attempted to seek several terms that can be acceptable to the junta side and it was the military junta that has no real interest in reaching agreement at all. Instead, the members of NLD and other democratic forces were arrested and tortured. Aung San Suu Kyi was also put under house arrest during the 15 years of the past 21 years.

For Aung San Suu Kyi, this is not her first time being released from house arrest. At first, She had to spend six years under house arrest until 1995. After her release, she was physically attacked by the members of pro-military organization called Union Solidarity and Development Association (which became Union Solidarity and Development Party in 2010). In early November 1996, she was in her car to visit supporters when a mob of thugs – some throwing stones, some wielding iron bars – surrounded the vehicle and smashed the windshield. This was in an area controlled by military forces, who did nothing to intervene.

Again in September 2000, She was put under house arrest until 2002. After her release, she made a lot of organizing trips around the country despite of harassment and interruptions by the ruling junta and pro-military USDA members. On May 30, 2003, Depayin Massacre took place with 500 unarmed civilians being attacked by military junta and USDA organized thugs. At least 70 people were killed in this massacre. In fact, Aung San Suu Kyi was the victim of a well-organized crime, however, she was put under house arrest again. She had to spend seven years and have been released on November 13, 2010. By taking these events into account, there would be a probability of assassination attempts on her in the future.

Indeed, it could be very difficult to predict the real intent of the decision of the junta to release her, especially after the rigged election on November 7, 2010. Will this decision could actually start a new chapter of the history of Burma? Do the generals have the real intent to start negotiation process among the newly-elected authoritarian government, the democratic forces and ethnic nationalities? Despite of her release, the junta has not made any further announcements regarding the formation of government based on the outcome of election results as well as no formal decision of engagement with the pro-democracy forces yet.

Changing the political climate
By this time, both Aung San Suu Kyi and the military generals need to reassess the political calculus again. Burma is a country with constitutional crisis and conflicts can only be resolved with a 'Tripartite Dialogue' among three parties: the military regime, pro-democracy forces (NLD) and the ethnic nationalities. It is obvious that the military regime could not resolve the decades-long political struggle by hand-picking some ethnic groups and holding the authoritarian elections. It is also clear that Aung San Suu Kyi and democratic forces could not resolve the inconclusive struggle without using all types of leverage (normative leverage, coercive leverage and walk-away leverage) and having a sound BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement).

While applying leverage (relative strength) for Negotiation and Dialogue, it is important to use BATNA as a negative inducement. It is an effective signal that its counterparts would be left in a worse position if they do not come to the negotiation table. Developing effective BATNAs could induce the military regime to negotiate with the democratic forces and ethnic groups. On the other hand, these could be useful if there were no prospect for any political dialogue and the pro-democratic forces had to use the replacement mode of democratization. There should be several contingency plans in the case of partial agreement or no agreement at all.

Along with the development of BATNAs and various contingency plans, Track II leaders (highly respected individuals who occupy formal positions in sectors of education, health, business, etc.) should focus on creating a shared vision, building relationships and forming highly-structured reconciliation commissions. Track III leaders (local community leaders, organizers of grass-root NGOs, etc.) should pay attention to the humanitarian needs of the community and attempt to build a broad-based reconciliation process.

Conclusion
From the wider perspective, it could be the greatest moment of the history of Burma if the military leaders decide to engage with pro-democracy forces and ethnic national leaders after the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. However, if the junta decides not to engage, Aung San Suu Kyi and pro-democracy forces should adopt all types of leverage. History tells us that only normative leverage could not bring a successful political dialogue. It must be accompanied by powerful BATNAs and walk-away leverage.

Khin Ma Ma Myo (14/11/2010)

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English Article: From the words of Aung San Suu Kyi

စစ္အာဏာရွင္တို႕၏ အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္မွ လြတ္ေျမာက္လာခဲ့ေသာ၊ ရွစ္ေလးလံုးျပည္သူ႕ အေရးေတာ္ပံုၾကီးမွ ေမြးဖြားလာခဲ့သည့္ လူထုေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အား ၂၀၀၆ ခုႏွစ္က ေရးသားခဲ့ဖူးေသာ အမွတ္တရ ေဆာင္းပါးျဖင့္ ေလးစားစြာ ၾကိဳဆိုအပ္ပါသည္။

From the words of Aung San Suu Kyi

The words of the leaders are always powerful. Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese democratic leader, represents the power of powerless. Powerful and Valuable words can be found in her writings, i.e. Freedom from Fear (1991, 1995), Letters from Burma (1997). On the anniversary of her 61st Birthday, I would like to recall her key valuable words.



(1) ‘It is natural that a people who have suffered much from the consequences of bad government should be preoccupied with theories of good government’ (Aung San Suu Kyi, 1995:168)

Throughout the history, good government has served three main purposes such as
-Maintaining order (Preserving life and protecting property)
-Providing public goods and
-Promoting equality with the welfare state concept.

According to the national development stream, the World Bank (1992) defined good governance as the means in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resource for development. Leftwich identifies three stands as

-systematic (involves the distribution of both internal and external political and economic power)
-political (a state enjoying both legitimacy and authority, derived from a democratic mandate)
-administrative ( involves an efficient, open, accountable and audited public service which has the bureaucratic competence to help design and implement appropriate policies and manage whatever public sector there is). (Leftwich, 1993:610-611)

Furthermore, the UK’s Overseas Development Administration identified 4 components as
-The legitimacy of government, which depends on the existence of participatory processes and the consent of those who are governed;
-The accountability of both the political and official elements of government for their actions, depending on the availability of information, freedom of the media, transparency of decision-making and the existence of mechanisms to call individuals and institutions to account;
-The competence of government to formulate appropriate policies, make timely decisions, implement them effectively and deliver services;
-Respect for human rights and rule of law to guarantee individual and group rights and security to provide a framework for economic and social activity and to allow and encourage all individuals to participate. (Summarized in Truner & Hulme, 1997:231)

(2) ‘The people of Burma want not just a change of government but a change in political values. The unhappy legacies of authoritarianism can be removed only if the concept of absolute power as the basis of government is replaced by the confidence of the people in their right and ability to decide the destiny of their nation, mutual confidence between the people and their leaders and most importance of all, confidence in the principles of justice, liberty and human rights’ (Aung San Suu Kyi, 1995: 178)

People should have the rights to participate in the government decision making process by different means for the destiny of their nation. According to the procedural democratic theory, three main principles are important.

-Universal participation (everyone within the boundaries of political community should be allowed to vote)
-Political equality (all votes should be counted equally)
-Majority rule (A group should decide to do what the majority of its participants wants to do) (Goldman, 2005:35)

For a small and simple society, these principles must be met with a direct or participatory democracy (a system of government where rank-and-file citizens rule themselves rather than electing representatives to govern on their behalf). For a large society, representative democracy (a system of government where citizens elect public officials to govern on their behalf) is desirable. In this system, elected representatives should respond to public opinion so that ‘responsiveness’ has become the fourth principle of the procedural democratic theory.

Moreover, Aung San Suu Kyi mentioned to be confident in the principles of justice, liberty and human rights. Justice refers to fair and morally defensible treatment for individuals in the light of human rights standards or standards of economic or social well-being. (Taylor & Curtis, 2005:420) The rights to liberty set conditions on the way in which individuals interact. To implement the liberty rights of individuals, governments must protect them against incursions by other individuals. (Kelly, 1998:258)

The basic elements of human rights are not a simply matter of fundamental ideologies, norms-rules, standards and principles. In contrast, these are embedded in institutions. The core of the universal system consists of the United Nations Charter and related instruments such as the International Bill of Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Basically, human life is safer, pleasanter, and more dignified when rights are acknowledged than when they are not. (Brown, 2005:701)

(3) It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. … A people who would build a nation in which strong, democratic institutions are firmly established as a guarantee against state-induced power must first learn to liberate their own minds from apathy and fear. (Aung San Suu Kyi, 1995:183)

Aung San Suu Kyi focused on the concept of freedom from fear. Freedom (eleutheria) is the fundamental democratic ideal. Freedom can be used in two main senses: freedom of and freedom from. Freedom of refers to the absence of constraints on behavior; for example, Freedom of Worship and Freedom of Speech. Freedom from refers to immunity from. It also symbolizes the fight against exploitation and oppression in the modern political context (Berry, 2005:13). The examples include Freedom from want and Freedom from fear. As the Burmese Democratic Movement is the fight against the oppression by the military regime, she encouraged the people to be fearlessness.

In conclusion, it is obvious that Aung San Suu Kyi have used the rightful principles and valuable words for the democratic struggle of Burma with her knowledge, skills and commitment to the struggle. May I conclude this essay with the most valuable words by Aung San Suu Kyi?

“If you ask whether we shall achieve democracy, whether there will be general elections, Here is what I shall say. Don’t think about whether or not these things will happen. Just continue to do what you believe is right. One’s responsibility is to do the right thing.” (Aung San Suu Kyi, 1995:212)

Khin Ma Ma Myo (2006)

References
Aung San Suu Kyi. (1995) Freedom from Fear, revised edition, Penguin Books, London
Brown, C. (2005) Human Rights in Baylis & Smith (eds.) (2005) Globalization, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford
Crick, B. (2002) Democracy: A very short introduction, Oxford University Press, University of Oxford
Ferns & Watkins (1985) What Politics is About, The Sherwood Press, London
Kelly, D. (1998) A Life of one’s own: individual rights and the welfare state, in Steiner & Alston (eds.) (2000) International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics & Morals, Oxford University Press, Oxford
Goldman, Berry & Janda (2005) The Challenge of Democracy, 8th edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York
Victor, B. (1998) The Lady: Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Laureate and Burma’s prisoner, Faber & Faber INC, New York

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Sample Teaching Plan (Finance)

Sample teaching plan (Principles of Finance)

(စာၾကြင္း။ ။ ညီမေလးတေယာက္က teaching plan နမူနာရွိရင္ ဘေလာ့ေပၚ တင္ေပးပါလို႕ လွမ္းေျပာတာနဲ႕ တင္ထားေပးပါတယ္။ ပညာေရးေဆာင္းပါးမ်ားကိုလဲ အခါသင့္သလို ဆက္လက္ေရးသားတင္ျပေပးပါ့မယ္)

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National Policy Sovereignty

အခ်ဳပ္အျခာအာဏာႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍

ကမာၻၾကီးလဲ တျဖည္းျဖည္းနဲ႔ ရြာၾကီးသဖြယ္ ျဖစ္လာတာနဲ႔အမွ် national policy sovereignty ကို relinquish လုပ္ရေတာ့မွာလား ဆိုတဲ့ ျပႆနာက ေနရာေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားမွာ ေျပာၾက၊ ဆိုၾက၊ ေရးၾကနဲ႔ ျဖစ္လာပါျပီ။ အီးယူတို႔၊ အာဆီယံတို႔လို အဖြဲ႔အစည္းၾကီးေတြရဲ့ အခန္းက႑ေတြကလဲ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားရဲ့ ေပၚလစီေရးရာေတြအေပၚမွာ influence အရမ္းၾကီးလာပါျပီ။ ဒါနဲ႔ပတ္သက္လို႔ EU ရဲ့ Regional Policy ဟာ ႏိုင္ငံတခုခ်င္းစီက ကိုယ္ပိုင္ေပၚလစီေတြကို အစားထိုးသင့္သလားဆိုတဲ့ စာတမ္းေလးတခု ေရးခဲ့ဖူးပါတယ္။ အပ်င္းေျပဖတ္ၾကရေအာင္ ဘေလာ့ေပၚမွာ တင္ထားလိုက္ပါတယ္။

Relinquishing national policy sovereignty: Should the EU

replace the individual policies of member countries?

Introduction

In March 1957, the Treaty of Rome was signed to establish the European Economic Community (EEC). In its preamble, the countries refer to the need ‘to strengthen the unity of their economies and to ensure their harmonious development by reducing the differences existing among the various regions and the backwardness of the less-favored regions’. Then, in February, 1992, the Treaty on European Union is formally signed at Maastricht by EC Foreign and Finance Ministers. Since then, EU has provided an institutional umbrella for regions and maintained its position as the world’s most sophisticated and advanced regional integration arrangement.

To promote economic and social cohesion within this umbrella for regions, EU-level policies are created to cover major areas such as social, employment, agriculture, environment, energy, science and technology, industrial, transport, competition, trade and regional policies. With the benefits yielded from the more coherent EU policy approach, the question of whether to relinquish national policy sovereignty over economic matters to EU-level authorities or not has become a prominent issue among the policy makers.

This paper will discuss about the relinquishing national policy sovereignty based on regional policy issues and answer whether the EU Regional Policy should completely replace the individuals policies of member countries or not.

Regions and Regionalism

Regions vary widely in their size, population, levels of economic development, historical origins, contemporary identity, cultural distinctiveness and political activism. Region refers to any piece of continuous territory, bigger than a more locality or neighborhood, which is part of a territory of a larger state, and whose political authority or government, is subordinate to that of the state. (Anderson, 2001)

Accordingly, regionalism refers to the top-down imposition of administration or government based on regional territory or active bottom-up identification with the region in social, cultural or political terms.

The rise of the regionalism triggered the idea towards a ‘Europe of the regions’, an ideology of EU integration and legitimating.

Intergovernmentalism Vs Supranationalism

A form of EU governance has a compromise between intergovernmentalism and supranationalism which can be clearly found in the two competitive objectives of member states.

The first one is connected to pooling or surrendering sovereignty through political and economic integration in order to secure national prosperity, while the second one is connected to retaining sovereignty in order to maintain their autonomy.

Intergovernmentalism enables member states to pursue their own national interests and exercise a veto on development; however, supranationalism limits the ability to exercise a national veto and obliges them to follow decisions supported by a majority of the fellow member states. (Heffernan, 2001)

In general, the complex institutional structures, the range of policy responsibilities and the above combination of intergovernmental and supranational characteristics display EU governance as multi-level governance in which power is exercised not only by EU level decision-makers but also national and sub-national decision makers to various degrees in different countries.

Nugent (1994) categorized the extent of EU policy involvement into

• extensive EU policy involvement (Trade, Agriculture, Fishing, Market regulation)
• policy responsibility shared between the EU and the member states (Regional, Competition, Industrial, Foreign, Monetary, Environmental, Equal Opportunities, Working conditions, Consumer protection, movement across external borders, Energy, Transport, Macroeconomic, Combating terrorism and drugs, Pensions)
• limited EU policy involvement (Health, Education, Defense, International Crime, Social Welfare)
• virtually no EU policy involvement (Housing, Civil Liberties, Domestic crimes

There is no congruence, nor even convergence, in the political role of cities, municipalities and regions in the EU because of the enormous differences in the level of organization, financial resources, political autonomy and political influence of different governments across Europe. (Hooghe & Marks, 1996) However, economic integration gives rise to strong forces for economic convergence because closer economic relations between regions at different levels of technological development should lead to the transmission if know-how from the more advanced to the less advanced. Moreover, capital flows from the capital-abundant regions to regions with unexploited investment opportunities. Furthermore, there can be a flow of labor from the poor to richer regions. (Smith and Wallace, 1994)

Economic integration of the EU

Five main types under economic integration can be identified as follows:

1. Preferential tariff areas (member states set lower tariffs on imports from one another than they do on imports from no-members)
2. Free trade areas (Free trade is established between member states)
3. Custom Unions (Free trade areas which operate a common external policy for trade with on-members)
4. Common Markets (Customs unions within which capital and labor move freely)
5. Economic and monetary unions (identical to common markets except that fiscal and monetary policy is dominated by a central authority rather than by the individual member states) (Armstrong, 2000)

Economic integration can be considered as a considerable factor that has effects on regional economic disparities between high-income regions (the core of the Europe) and low-income regions (the periphery of the Europe).

One classification separates the low income regions into

• depressed areas which are retrogressing
• lagging areas which are growing but a slower rates than most other regions and
• substantially undeveloped ‘pioneer’ or ‘frontier’ regions (Robock, 1970)

Within the EU, a wide range of different types of low income regions exist.

The following table shows the regional GDP per inhabitant in the EU which comprises 27 member countries with 493 million citizens in 2004. It exhibits that one region in four has under 75% of the average of the EU.

(Source- http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy)

EU economic integration has a continuing long process. The changes of Single European Market (SEM), Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and Easter Enlargement have a serious impact on economic integration process.

• SEM

The EU abolished tariffs and quotas used by national governments quickly and tried to eliminate the Non-tariff barriers (NTBs) with the design of SEM. The SEM legislation has concentrated on three main groups of the NTBs such as cost-increasing barriers, market-entry barriers and market-distorting practices. (Armstrong, 2000)

• EMU

EMU is a means for consolidating the power of associated states into a bloc against an alignment of global market forces and a reinforcement of EU-level regulatory order. The ECB (European Central Bank) is the representative agency of the euro and the new EU macroeconomic governance structure forged by the creation of the euro has shifted a considerable degree of power to a transnational elite community of central bankers.(Germain, 2001)

• Eastern Enlargement

Eastern Enlargement posed the fundamental challenges for EU regional policy with its impact on the EUR15 member states and EU budgeting implications. New members of the Enlargement process make them eligible for structural funds which provide investment grants, employment grants, infrastructure development and other measures. (Lewis, 2001)

Does Regional Policy Matter?

A central purpose of the EU Regional Policy, which has been functioning since 1975, is to redress the core-periphery divides within the economy. (Dent, 2001) The EU ‘core’ is characterized by its high-tech industrial development, superior infrastructure networks and a high-income per capita demographic profile. To the contrary, the periphery regions exhibit low-tech industrial development, weaker infrastructure provision and a poorer demographic profile.

Indeed, Regional Policy is an important policy to reduce economic and social disparity, to show solidarity and competitiveness and to meet the challenges of the 21^st century. EU is the first among the major powers to grapple the challenges of the twenty first century such as

• how to redefine national sovereignty as individual nations surrender economic autonomy;
• how to mesh different cultures with different priorities and different decision-making processes;
• how to deregulate separate national economic regimes and to induce competition among national monopolies;
• how to establish transnational incentives to promote innovation and technological advance without sacrificing the benefits from, or being captive to laissez-faire economics. (Aho, 1994 quoted in Meier, 1998)

Since 1980s, the funding of the EU for regional support has increased from 9% of the EU-GDP in 1980 up to 31% of the EU-GDP in 2001. (Roderiguez-Pose & Fratesi, 2004) So the regional policy has become one of the most important policies in the European Union.

Regional Policy Instruments

The main funds to implement the EU Regional Policy include

• The European Fund for Regional Development (EFRD)
• The European Social Fund (ESF) and
• The Cohesion Fund.

The ERDF aims to strengthen economic and social cohesion in the European Union by correcting imbalances between its regions by means of financing direct aid to investments in companies (in particular SMEs) to create sustainable jobs; infrastructures linked notably to research and innovation, telecommunications, environment, energy and transport; financial instruments (capital risk funds, local development funds, etc.) to support regional and local development and to foster cooperation between towns and regions; technical assistance featurs.

(http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/funds/feder/index_en.htm)

The ESF is designed to finance training, retraining, migration, anti-discrimination and other labor market policies. (Armstrong, 2000)

The Cohesion Fund is aimed at Member States whose Gross National Income (GNI) per inhabitant is less than 90% of the Community average. It serves to reduce their economic and social shortfall, as well as to stabilise their economy.

(http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/funds/cf/index_en.htm)

Historical Review of EU Regional Policy

The first EU Regional Policy was introduced in 1975 and since then, the policy has been reformed on six separate occassions. Reforms in 1989-1993 were obvious because of the SEM process, doubling the size of the financial allocations to structural funds and the establishment of the EU delivery system which is based on the principles of concentration of assistance, co-ordination, partnership, subsidiarity, programming and additionality.

The delivery system was retained for the next budget period (1994 to 1999) and its key principles have become the policy objectives. In 1994, EU untroduced a wholly new financial instrument called the Cohesion Fund which operate as an arm of the European Union Regional Policy. (Armstrong, 2000)

However, the EU Regional Policy has been major reformed in 2000-2006 budget period by means of the cutting back of the number of priority objectives from six to three such as New Objective 1 (lagging regions), New Objective 2 (economic and social conversion of regions in structural crisis) and New Objective 3 (development of human resources).

In 2007, the EU Regional policy has been reformed into new objectives again. The objectives for 2007-2013 budget period include

1. Convergence

This concerns promoting growth-enhancing conditions and factors leading to real convergence for the least-developed Member States and regions. (EC decision document number C(2006) 3475)

2. Regional Competitiveness and Employment

It concerns strengthening competitiveness and attractiveness, as well as employment, through development programmes and supporting more and better jobs. (EC decision document number C(2006)3480)

3. European Territorial Co-operation

It aims to strengthen cross-border co-operation through joint local and regional initiatives, trans-national co-operation aiming at integrated territorial development, and interregional co-operation and exchange of experience. (EC decision document number C(2007)1284)

The funds that contribute to these objectives can be shown as

(source: http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/policy/objec)

It is obvious that the existing EU regional policy has strengthened its role for effectiveness.

Policy making and co-ordination of Regional Policy

The stages of the Regional Policy Making include

· The Council and the European Parliment which are required to make decisions of the Structural Funds and its rules of use based on the proprosal from the European Commission

· To make this proposal, the Commission has to consult closely with member states over the Community strategic guidelines on cohesion

· Along with the Strategic guidelines, each member state prepares a National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF). It defines the strategy as well as operation programmes (OPs) that each member state hopes to implement.

· If OPs are adopted by the Commission, member states and regions have the task of implementation and the Commission has to commit the expenditures, pays the certified expenditure and monitors the programmes.

· Finally, the Commission and the Member States have to submit the Strategic Reports to the Council and Parliament.

Thus it is obvious that all three levels of government, EU, member states and regional/ local authorities are involved in Regional Policy so that their policy actions must be harmonized. The following figure shows the co-ordination of regional policy in the European Union.

The Eu has an important role to improve co-ordination between member states and to ensure its own policy is closely related with the regional policies of member states as well as other EU-level policies such as agricultural and trade policy.

Co-ordination of regional policy in the EU (source: Armstrong, 2000)

Success of co-ordination among the levels of government varies due to institutional/constitutional constraints within member states. Federal or quasi-federal systems facilitate greater inclusion of regional governments in the creation and implementation of EU policy. (Dudek, 1998)

However, tensions often emerge among levels of governments as regions seek greater participation with the EU rather than their national governments in creating and implementing regional policy as a way to gain mire autonomy from their central government. (Smyrl. 1997)

Centralization Vs Decentralization

By looking at the EU economic policies as a whole, the costs of pooling economic capabilities are obvious. Economic polices once managed exclusively by national governments are merged or coordinated at the EU level including measures that were concerned with the regulation or product, capital and labor markets. Also monetary policies have designed by increasingly focusing on the general EU economic interest.

In contrast, the benefits of pooled economic capacities are obvious as well. The EU-level policies have developed to help economic governance of the EU. Also the general rationalizing of policies at the EU level helps to avoid overlaps and a waste of policy resources between member states and it can create important synergies between them. (Dent, 2001)

In the case of regional policy, the EU can help structural funds to poor member states in accordance with the objectives. However, individual states are required to implement the operation programmes (OPs). For each OP, the Member State has to appoint a managing authority, a certification body and an auditing body at the national, regional and local levels. The way the funds are managed is based on the shared responsibility system between the European Commission and Member State authorities. So it is clear than individual member countries have its own role to play in distinct regional policies.

Likewise, EU has its own distinct role to play in generating financial transfers to the member states with the worst regional problems and in helping to co-ordinate regional policy across the European Union. (Armstrong, 2000)

However, the prominent role of the EU does not mean it should completely replace the individual policies of member countries. Generally, central governments of member countries retained responsibility for programme proposals, payments, authorization and modification of projects, the administration of ERDF receipts and the transfer of funding to the appropriate authority. (Bache & Jones, 2000)

Although the ‘partnership principle’ has been operated to achieve more participation if lower levels of government, the wording of the Commission assertion still leaves the final say to member states and is dependent upon their respective institutional structure. (Colino, 1996)

Moreover, there are strong reasons against the over-centralization of regional policy in the EU. The main arguments include

• The danger of a uniform approach to solving problems which by their nature differ from one region to another
• The substantial advantage of local knowledge and experiences in designing particular regional policy programmes for specific geographical areas means that member states must be expected to retain substantial control over regional policy
• Over-centralization is likely to stifle innovation in the development of policy instruments; whereas decentralization allows for greater diversity and experimentation in the construction of policies, encourages greater local participation and makes policy makers more accountable to those they serve. (Armstrong, 2000)

Conclusion

By looking at the institutional structures, principles and policy formulation and implementation process, it is obvious that the EU Regional Policy should not completely replace the individual policies of the member states.

References

Anderson, J. (2001) ‘The rise if regions and regionalism in Western Europe’ in Guibernau, M. (ed.) Governing the European Diversity, London, Sage/The Open University

Armstrong, H. & Taylor, J. (2000) Regional Economics and Urban policy, 3^rd edition

Bachel, I. & Jones, R. (2000) ‘Has EU Regional Policy empower the Region? A study of Spain and UK’, Regional and Federal Studies, Vol.10(3), pp. 1-20

Colinocesar (1996) ‘The Impact of European integration on the Territorial Balance of Power in Member States’, The European Policy Process, Occasional Paper N0.2

Dent, C. (2001) ‘Governing the EU economy as a whole’ in Thompson, G. (ed.) Governing the European Economy, London, Sage/ The Open University

Dudek, C. (1998) ‘Coordinating Regional Policy in the EU’, EU Studies Association Conference, Austin, Texas

Germain, R. (2001) The European Central Bank and the problem of authority, Journal of European Public Policy

Heffernan, R. (2001) ‘Building the EU’ in Bromley, S. (2001) Governing the European Union, London, Sage/The Open University

Hooghe, L. & Marks, G. (1996) ‘Europe with the Regions: Channels of Regional Representation in the EU, Publicis, Vol.26, No.1, pp.73-91

Lewis, P. (2001) ‘The Enlargement of the EU’ in Bromley, S. (ed.) Governing the European Union, London, Sage/The Open University

Meier, G. (1998) The International Environment for Business, Oxford, OUP

Nugent, N. (1994) The Government and Politics of the European Union, The European Union series, Macmillan Press

Robocks, S. (1970) Strategies for Regional Economic Development in Mckee, D.; Dean, T. & Leahy, W. (eds) Regional Economics: Theory and Practice, The Free press, New York

Rodiguez-Pose, A. & Fralesis, U. (2004) Between Development and Social Polices: The Impact of European Structural Funds in objective 1 Regions, Regional Studies, 38(1), 97-113

Smyrl, M. (1997) ‘Does European Community Regional Policy Empower the Regions?’ Governance, Vol.10, N0.3, 1997

Smith, A. & Wallace, H. (1994) ‘The EU: Towards a policy of Europe’, International Affairs, Vol.70 (3), p.429-444

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People's Revolution

People’s Revolution: Suggestions for current situations in Burma

I simply believe that Burmese Democratic Movement is a revolution. Not just a campaign. People wage revolution as a means of regaining their identity either from foreign domination or from repressive regimes. As it is a revolution, we need to use all battlefronts of People’s revolution; namely cultural-spiritual, political, social economic, military and international battlefronts. If we emphasize only one battlefront, time delays can occur.

Conditions for a revolution

My main concern in this article is the advanced form of people’s war during the latter half of 20th century and 21st century, i.e. the revolutionary model.

According to this model, there are certain conditions that must be existed or created to get a certain degree of success. These include

• Revolutionary potential
• Revolutionary situation
• Leadership and organization
• People support and
• Development of the philosophy of co-coordinated actions in all battlefronts.

Revolutionary Potential

This exists when considerable changes have taken place in the economic base of society; when there is a decline in the effectiveness of the administration; when extraordinary events occur which show the weaknesses in the ability of the institutions of a State and so on.

The current situations in Burma highlight that such conditions exist. For example; economic deterioration, inflation, lack of effective administration, corruption, decline in middle classes, decay of state control in crime figures, recent fuel price hikes and using state terrorism against the opposition groups, etc.

If these conditions exist, a revolution situation comes into play.

Revolutionary situation

It develops when there are

• Fear of deprivation and rising expectations such as development of social organizations, sufficient number of people who believe that their natural growth was confined by the government system and growing numbers of people who convince that something needed to do to change the system.
• Failure of the government system such as ineffectiveness, corruption and lack of government contacts with low levels of the society.
• Breakdown of control and administrative agencies such as polarization between agencies (police, special branches, military forces), collaboration by members of these agencies with emerging revolutionary forces
• Breakdown of essential services such as failure of communications and means of supply of essential commodities (food, fuel, electricity, medical aid)

There are some other facts but I only mentioned the ones that developed the current revolutionary situation in Burma. Most of the People in Burma understand that they were being deprived of universal rights as a human and their potential growth was limited due to the military regime. So they realize that the system must be changed and the regime should be kicked out. However, we must be very careful to put their expectations to put forward without too much dependency on the outside forces.

Furthermore, there is a failure in the system and the government has lack of contacts with the low levels of the society. We need to take advantage to this failure to organize a social guerilla force.

There is also a possible breakdown in the control and administrative agencies. To improve the breakdown, we have to open the way out of their main agencies. Recently, the high official of Shan Army announced a welcome message to the soldiers who want to collaborate with the revolutionary people side. This is an important political initiative in this situation. As they are members of the state agencies, they may take weapons and ammunitions. If they collaborate with the people in urban areas, we need to hide these weapons for further possible usages. So we have to prepare the secret places in advance.

For essential services, some preparatory talks should start between the revolutionary forces and the business people who are willing to help. We have to understand the nature of these people. In general, they want to stay behind the curtain and help as a low profile.

Leadership and Organization

While developing the above revolutionary situations, any regimes may be functional to remove the leaders. If they can succeed by using genocide or massive removal, revolution can be delayed for a decade, a generation or sometimes even a century. So it is important that there must be a continuous hands-on training and skills development as well as finding the potential leaders.

Revolutionary problems demand the qualities of the leader depending on the nature of the war. Where there is a positional-linear war, it requires technical and technological skills. For mobile war, it requires mental and moral characteristics. For people’s war, it requires all these plus intellectual, psychological and social skills. Some are built-in skills. But some skills can be trained. Altering the equation of political power is an essential task now. On our revolutionary side, we have social, cultural and psychological factors now. On the regime side, they have economic, political and military factors. How will we equate?

We have to equate by winning hearts and minds, by influencing the behavior of the people and alienating them from the government. The people in Civil Services should be mainly organized to do this. The regime may have some control mechanisms to prevent them to join the revolutionary forces. We have to encourage them to tackle these mechanisms without fear by all means. As they may have more potential losses than ordinary people, they do not join at the early stages of the revolution. We have to use some tactics to win their hearts and minds first. One important thing is not to frustrate if they do not co-operate at the first stage. Some revolutionary forces sometimes make a mistake to challenge them when they do not alien from the government in the callings of Civil Services Strike or whatever. Repetitions can be worth in some events. We have to call and call again.

Let’s move on to the organizational requirements.

A grass-root infrastructure must be organized in all segments of society. It is the major requirement. If there is a lack of this infrastructure, the government can control the situation easily within a short period. It should have the components of

· revolutionary organizers (cadres) who build the organization in different areas

· cell system of arms-group fighters

· vertical system of committees for political control

· horizontal system of committees and organizations covering all walks of life and

· circuit organizations for intelligence and escape routes

The next requirement is the high-level intelligence organization in all organs of society. As Sun Tzu, Donald and Cookridge mentioned, intelligence (social intelligence, economic intelligence, political intelligence, military intelligence, etc.) is the common denominator. It is important that there must be a direct interlocked at all organization levels to make immediate responses. Centralization is not good because there is a time lag between event and response. If there are a lot of political organizations, trying to reduce the centralized system and letting the local organizations to form alliances by themselves to do local activities will be the best option. Decentralization is very important for mobile forces.

The other requirement is a high-grade propaganda system for the acceleration of events. This is the life of the political programme so that media should give the accurate information and clear objectives of the revolution. The public sometimes make decisions to collaborate with the revolutionary forces or stay away in accordance with the media. Media is vital in gaining initiative as well as slowing down the momentum of the revolution.

Moreover, there must be a politicized military force on the side of the revolution and at least some military actions at the peak moments of the revolution. The main aim is not for military victory. However, it is important for motives.

The next requirement is the development of international connections. For this, we have to categorize which country or organization will be helpful in what segments. We have to ask various forms of help from the right connection at the right time. Otherwise, time investment to build these connections can become zero rates of returns.

People Support

Mao once mentioned as ‘Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the essential one, it is the power and morale of man that finally counts’. Even in wars, the support of the people is a crucial one.

There are some requirements in this condition such as the necessity of social analysis, the emergence of living political program and the commitment and dedication of the leaders and organizers to the cultural, social and economic needs of the people.

For our revolution, we have achieved people support in some degrees. To get a full support and more collaboration, we have to initiate the political program that contains historic facts that identify the real enemy, explanations that cause the social and economic inequalities, spiritual hope of final victory, international appeal and mass communication means of grass-root levels through radio, press, leaflets, demonstrations, music and speakers. These must be carefully designed that gives our people to have the clear vision of the revolution.

I would like to emphasize in this point that international appeal is only useful for telling people that they are being watched and helped by the international community in most circumstances. So we should be careful not to give impossible hopes and expectations because if it does not happen, the momentum of the revolution can be slow down. International battlefront is only one part of the five main battlefronts of People’s Revolution we have to wage. We should not totally focus on one front as it can reduce the co-ordination efforts between all battlefronts.

Battlefronts of Revolution

In a cell development process, the central core of the growth is a nucleus and the cytoplasm region that contains segments is attracted around the core. In a revolutionary model, the nucleus is the political battlefront and the outside segments include cultural-spiritual, social- economic, military and international battlefront.

Among these battlefronts, cultural-spiritual one is the foundation of the revolution. It aims for the man’s soul or his subconscious mind. Apparently, social-economic one aims for man’s heart or his conscious mind. Through the political core, cultural-spiritual needs are shown in moral values and partially translated into social and economic terms to direct the political struggle. The other battlefront, military one provides the organizational form and its actions are in support of other fronts although it cannot gain a military victory. The final battlefront, international one is concerned with applying external pressures on the established government.

There must be a high level of coordinated actions in all battlefronts. I sincerely think that we have weaknesses in some battlefronts and a lot of unnecessary actions in some in terms of manpower and financial expenditures. If we cannot fulfill this gap, it can lead to some delays for a final victory.

In conclusion, I would like to make some suggestions to

(i) take the geo-political advantages such as spreading the demonstrations to other places and other cities

(ii) use the intelligence and public help to identify the places where there are a lot of military troops and change the directions of the marching routes

(iii) avoid the well-known central downtown like Sule and Shwedagon pagodas, Hle Tan, Pansodan

(iv) start demonstrations near to the markets

(v) form the circuit organizations for escape routes (military will use killing fields as a battle so that please try to avoid the route that can be trapped like a killing field)

(vi) explain the people how to response calmly during confrontations (If people do not know, it can be more injured)

(vii) avoid putting someone too obvious among the people (If the troops can identify the leader, there are more risks of snipers and target shoots. The speakers and the flags must be hold interchangeably)

(viii) use the strategy of surprise movements like 'hit and run' in guerilla warfares

(viii) avoid wearing any kind of uniforms

(ix) avoid using the video camcorders for media because it can be easily targeted. (Please use the small video cameras)

(x) try to organize a horizontal committee including all walks of life that leads to a coalition interim government inside Burma as soon as possible. All internal and external democratic forces must support when it appeared. This is the most important issue as it can take the next political step for this situation. However, please do not use the individual names for media purposes and use the collective name in all circumstances.

All these are my sincere suggestions for our democratic revolution. At last, People's revolution always wins.

"Walk on"

Khin Ma Ma Myo

(Democratic Federation of Burma)

(28/09/2007)

References

Elliot-Bateman, E.; Ellis, J. and Bowden, T (1974) Revolt to revolution: Studies in the 19th and 20th century European Experience, Manchester University Press, Rowan and Littlefield

Baron A.H. de Jomini,(1971) The Art of War, Reprinted, Westport, Conn

Lawrence, T. (1935) Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Jonathan, Cape

General Vo Nguyen Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, Hanoi, 1961

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