NOTE: The content of this post was originally authored for a class I'm taking this Interim on Calvin College's January Series. This content was written to be a short, one page reflection prompted by a speaker's presentation. Therefore, this post does not have much context and has not been edited (or perhaps through out) very well. It is essentially just some of my very rough, incoherent thoughts that will not be backed or exegeted well due to the nature of the original assignment.
After listening to Edith Mirante’s talk, “Burma on the Brink,” the thing that really struck me is how blessed and fortunate we are to live in the United States, a country with a stable, rational democracy. While it’s encouraging to hear that Burma seems to be moving towards a full-fledged democracy, I still can’t help but wonder if they will ever fully implement such a democracy in the near future. Mirante’s comparison of Burma’s fake, military democracy’s officials pretending to take up democratic roles to children pretending to be the characters they dress up as for Halloween is an area of great concern for me. While individuals sometimes truly do take up the personas or fronts that they put up, crises of faith or identity are bound to eventually occur, reawaking individuals’ previous states and beliefs. As the planned “real” democratic election begins to loom, it seems to me very likely that the powerful military officials of Burma may begin to realize what a real democracy will mean for themselves as individuals; meaning, they will finally grasp that they are on the cusp of relinquishing the tremendous power they’ve firmly grasped for so many years. When I consider some of the great historical figures whom were unwilling to relinquish their power, I begin to have serious reservations that the historically cruel Burma military leaders will be willing to simply “ride off into the sunset,” accepting menial lives and positions of little to no power.
Reinforcing this idea is the fact that the Burma military has been known to arbitrarily “gun down” and execute its own citizens in order to reinforce its power and remind the population that the government is in control. The military run government is the population’s family: father, mother, little sister and big brother. The government has gone to great lengths to establish that they are god to the population – it decides who lives and dies. Clearly the government has a history of possessing both megalomaniacal and irrational traits, a fact that bodes very poorly for the hope of a real democracy in the near future. Destructive habits and ideas are entrenched in the very fabric of the government, making it very hard for such habits and ideas to simply disappear after a couple of years of government officials pretending to be democrats. History has shown that radical government shifts rarely come peacefully. Are there exceptions to this? Sure, but they are few and far between. A (cynical) person such as myself can’t help but think that the road to a free, democratic Burma is and will continue to be a long, uphill one.
Does this all mean that Burma can’t hope and believe that it will be soon free? Not at all; as Edith Mirante mentioned in her presentation there are many hopeful signs that Burma is well on its way to a democracy. The country is, in some ways, in the best shape it’s been in for decades. What has to be remembered though is that while the signs are positive, a positive result is not guaranteed. Burma and its supporters need to stay vigilant and firm in their push towards freedom. The freedom that Burma hopes and longs for has not and will not be had easily; however, this difficult journey will only make such a freedom all the sweeter when it is finally obtained.
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