THE QUESTION ON POWER BUILDING (r)

[mikio@xxxxxxxxx]

Dear Dr. U Ne Oo,

Thank you for your thoughtful analysis on the issue of transfer of power at
the local/provincial level responding to my request.

I think your argument on the difference between South Africa and Burma is
basically valid. I feel I need to know more about the experience of both
countries. So please give me time before I can properly respond to your
argument.

Still, I think the local level democratisation deserves consideration.
Generally speaking, the local politics is regarded as the "school of
democracy", in which people can develop political awareness, basic skills
for political participation and leadership qualities, by relating problems
in their everyday lives to the local political process. The local residents
can easily mobilise themselves on these problems, which are practical and
require practical solutions--the kind of problems that even the
non-political persons can be interested in. Also, local participation is
easier than national participation because of the smaller size of the local
polity (usually local bureaucratic structure is not so rigid and
unaccountable as its counterpart on the national level). In Japan, leaders
of local initiatives (many of them are housewives) have recently begun to
venture into the national politics--the spillover of the local
democratisation into the national level (I sincerely hope that these
people, armed with indigenous but universal ideas of democracy and human
rights, change Japan's foreign policy on Burma soon!).

Next, I would like to raise the issue of nonviolence. One of the basic
ideas of nonviolence is for the ruled (oppressed) to withdraw their
cooperation from the rulers (in terms of tax payment, complying with the
law, etc.)--this is civil disobedience. As a result, the political power of
the rulers will "wither away and starve to death" because their power
depends on the co-operation of the ruled. In actuality, after the "ruled
camp" has successfully demonstrated its power of civil disobedience, a
political discourse usually starts between the two camps and the transfer
of power is a negotiated result. 

Provided this theory is correct (and I guess it is not 100% correct--it
seems rather obvious that the rulers can continue to rule over the
non-cooperative people by relying on external sources of power--but that
aside...), we can say that the SPDC/SLORC can continue their rule because
the Burmese people "cooperate" with them. How do they cooperate? I think we
need a detailed analysis of the nature and examples of the supposed
"cooperation" so that we can come up with a strategy for the Burmese people
to effectively withdraw their "cooperation" from the junta. In analysing
this matter, it may be useful to look at the "cooperation" at national,
regional (provincial) and local level.    

Perhaps, Dr. U Ne Oo and others can offer to do that? 

Anyway, from this standpoint, the democratisation of Burma can be seen as a
process of effectively withdrawing people's "cooperation" from the junta
(at the local, provincial and national level), and granting it to the
alternative centre(s) of authority, that is, NLD and its allied parties. 


Mikio Oishi