Later today the world will be transfixed, briefly, by President Barack Obama’s visit to Myanmar. The big news is that he will meet President Thein Sein and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on their home turf. Naturally the photo of the day for 19 November 2012 will be the two Nobel Peace Laureates: iconic auras synchronised, and smiling. Standing together.
President Obama will also make a speech at the University of Yangon. This article helps to summarise the significance of the location, while this one strikes a cautious note about the visit overall.
Notwithstanding such lingering hesitation, during the President’s few hours on-the-ground I expect that enthusiasm about Myanmar’s reformist juggernaut will reach hitherto unseen peaks. The Myanmar authorities recognise the significance of the first trip to their country by a serving United States President. They recall the dark years when the arrival of Air Force One was unimaginable.
Long shunned by the world’s democracies, the visit of such a towering and historic figure, fresh from his own electoral triumph, will give them extra confidence that the risks of the reforms have been well worthwhile.
For President Obama the journey to Myanmar is a deeply symbolic one too. The fact that he received Myanmar government support to address an audience at the University of Yangon is key. After decades as a locus for political strife, the campus is still largely off-limits: a dented shell, rotting, tragic. In the old days I recall being gently shooed away from its vicinity, and I am yet, I must confess, to step foot on its contested ground.
Elsewhere in the country I have spent time at a number of Universities, Colleges and the like. They are almost all in various states of decrepitude: hollowed out by dictatorial assessments of the uniquely destabilising potential of youth.
My guess is that at the University today President Obama will use the podium to offer his special support to those who want to re-build Myanmar’s education system. Naturally he will also endorse those who seek to reform other facets of national life. He will then probably sound a note of warning about the need to build real peace with ethnic minorities, including the Rohingya. But his big message, if his speech writers have got the tone right, will be addressed to Myanmar’s rising generations.
If Myanmar is to be a happier, wealthier and more inclusive society then the old generals will need to continue to surrender power and control. Who will replace them? With the results of the April 2012 by-election still reverberating, the Myanmar people seem convinced that the next government should be headed by Aung San Suu Kyi. But then who?
In the excitement, we should not forget that it will be the young people in the audience and on the streets who will ultimately determine the country’s destiny. Will their elders give them the chances they so clearly deserve?
In the laureate pic, ASSK’s smile may not be as beatific as usual. Both government and NLD people were suggesting a fortnight ago that she was less than keen on this visit.
But if Obama has recovered from the profound jet-lag he displayed in Bangkok, he should be beaming in the pic. Yangon is hardly Thein Sein’s home turf. It is a very significant concession to meet a visting head-of-state outside of the capital.
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The head of a state most responsible for the excesses of the West now recognizing the useless careless of past policy.
A policy that has wiped out the remnant of exchanges in Education/ideas that existed even under similar butcher Ne Win.
Will Obama redirect the West fixation onto the dire need of the citizenry instead of the excesses of the military?
Unfortunately Rangoon Arts and Science University is fast becoming an area of contested real estate.
Its functions of education relegated to multiple campuses in Yangon outlying area.
Real education need in Myanmar is the secondary school. An area even this present government is begging for assistance.
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NY Times piece on Obama’s grandfather’s time with the British Army in Burma and how Obama’s grandfather is part of Obama’s identity according to his auto-biography, etc.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/world/asia/in-myanmar-obama-will-see-land-that-shaped-his-grandfather.html
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David Nakamura-Washington Post:
RANGOON, Burma — For 15 years, Aung San Suu Kyi waited in her lakeside villa, confined to the small plot of land under house arrest, dreaming of her return to the world.
On Monday, the world, or a big piece of it, came calling on her.
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“Reconciliation”
A touted theme.
A few ongoing quagmire
1)Bamar vs Kayin
2)Bamar vs Kachin
3)Bamar vs Shan
4)Bamar/Yakhine vs Kala/Rohingyas
5)Bamar vs ? who’s next.
With the tenuously resolved recent one of
Bamar vs Wa
Bamar vs Mon
The military record of problem solving is indeed very poor.
Myanmar citizenry needs require more than 2 persons approved
by the West.
U Thein Sein has a genuine difficult task of urging the military to self restraint so as not to create more #5.
Simultaneously Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, instead of bemoaning or basking, must put forth ‘a genuine coalition of Burmese patriots’, that are truly for the Citizenry without any ideological fixation, from within and without, PROMOTING THEM VIGOROUSLY, so as to strengthen every none military aspects of reconciliation as well as other essential changes advancing Myanmar to its better self.
The inputs from the West MUST based on genuine understandings of Myanmar History beyond knee jerk reactions.
The transformation of this country to a better one than this current model will be long, arduous and unforgiving if the inputs are continually lips services from HR organizations biased media or individuals clearly represented here at New Mandala.
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