က်န္းမာဖို႔ဆိုတာ ..........
ရာသီဥတုရယ္၊ အစားအေသာက္ရယ္၊ စိတ္ခ်မ္းသာျခင္းကို ျဖစ္ေစမယ့္ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ (သို႔မဟုတ္) စိတ္အေႏွာက္ အယွက္မေပးမယ့္ ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ရယ္၊ ေနရာထိုင္ခင္းရယ္ေတြဟာ အေရးၾကီးတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းတရားေတြပါ။
မတဲ့စာ
အားနာစာ
ႏွေျမာစာေတြ ေရွာင္ျဖစ္ေအာင္ ေရွာင္ႏိုင္ရင္ က်န္းမာဖို႔ ေရာဂါမတိုးေစဖို႔ သိပ္မပူရေတာ့ဘူးလို႔ဆိုပါတယ္။ မိမိနဲ႔မတဲ့ေသာ အစားအစား ေရွာင္ျဖစ္ေအာင္ ေရွာင္ပါ။
အားနာၿပီး စားရမည့္အစားအစာေရွာင္ပါ။
ထားေတာ့လည္းမေကာင္းေတာ့တဲ့ ႏွေျမာလြန္းတဲ့စိတ္နဲ႔ စားမည့္အစားအစာလည္းေရွာင္ပါ။ ဒါဆိုရင္ အစား နဲ႕ပတ္သက္ၿပီး စိုးရိမ္စရာမရွိေတာ့ပါဘူး။
ရာသီဥတုနဲ႔အဆင္ေျပေအာင္ ေနတတ္ရင္လည္း က်န္းမာဖို႔ အေၾကာင္းတစ္ရပ္ပါ။ တခ်ဳိ႕က ရာသီ ဥတုနဲ႔ ဆန္႔က်င္ၿပီး ေနက်ေတာ့ ေနမေကာင္း ထိုင္မေကာင္းျဖစ္လာေရာ။ ပူတဲ့ရာသီမွာ မပူေအာင္ ေနတတ္ၾက တယ္ေလ။ သူသူကိုယ္ကိုပါပဲ။
အဲယားကြန္းတတ္ႏိုင္တဲ့သူက မပူေအာင္ ကာကြယ္ၾကတယ္။ အျမဲ တမ္းေနႏိုင္ရင္ေတာ့မဆိုးပါဘူး။ အပူထဲ ထြက္လိုက္ အေအးခန္းထဲ ျပန္ဝင္လိုက္နဲ႔ ၾကာေတာ့ ခႏၶာကိုယ္ထဲက အပူေတြက အရင္ဆုံး မ်က္လုံးကို ထိ ခိုက္ေရာ။ ရန္ကုန္ၿမဳိ႕ေတာ္ႀကီးမွာ ေတြ႔ရတာက ခုေနာက္ပိုင္း အေတာ္အမ်ားမ်ား တတ္ႏိုင္တဲ့ကေလးေလး ေတြ မ်က္မွန္ေလး တဝင္းဝင္းနဲ႔။ ေက်ာင္းစာေတြလုပ္ရတာလည္း ပါတာေပါ့ေလ။ မိဘေတြက ရာသီဥတုနဲ႔ အလိုက္အထိုက္မေနတတ္ေတာ့ ဘာမွမသိေသးတဲ့ ကေလးေလးေတြမွာ သနားစရာပါ။
ကိုယ္ေရာက္ေနတဲ့ အရပ္ေဒသမွာ ရာသီဥတုနဲ႔ အတိုက္အခံမလုပ္မိပါေစနဲ႔။ ဒါဆို ေနေကာင္းၿပီ က်န္းမာၿပီ လို႔ တစိပ္တေဒသ အားျဖင့္ မွတ္ယူထားပါ။
ရြာက ဦးကုလားဆိုတဲ့အဖိုးၾကီးရဲ႕ က်န္းမာေရးလမ္းညႊန္ခ်က္က ဒီလိုပါ။ သူက ေႏြရာသီဆိုရင္ ေစာင္ပါးပါး ကို ေခါင္းျခံဳၿပီး ေန႔လည္ေန႔ခင္း တေရးတေမာအိပ္ေလ့ရွိတယ္။ အိပ္ရာက ႏိုးၿပီဆိုရင္ ေရေႏြးပူပူကို မႈတ္ ေသာက္ေနေတာ့တာပါ။ တရုပ္ၾကီးတစ္ေယာက္ေျပာသလို နီတို႔ ဗမာေတြ ေရေႏြးပူပူေသာက္ၿပီး ဒီေန႔ အုိက္ ျပဳတ္ျပဳတ္ၾကီးနဲ႔ မိုးရြာမလားမသိဘူးလို႔ ေျပာတယ္။ ေႏြရာသီ ေရေႏြးေသာက္မွေတာ့ ဟင္း..........။
သူက က်ေနာ္တို႔ငယ္ငယ္က အေပ်ာ္အပ်က္ ေအာ္ေအာ္ေနတဲ့စကားေလးကို ေျပာျပတယ္။
အိုက္ရင္ ေစာင္ျခဳံ မီးကိုလႈံ။
ခ်မ္းရင္ ေရခ်ဳိး ႏွင္းေတာတိုး။
ေမာရင္ ေတာင္တက္ ေက်ာက္ခဲရြက္ ဆိုတာေလး သိၿပီးသားျဖစ္မွာပါ။
အိုက္ရင္ ေစာင္ျခဳံ မီးကိုလႈံ။
ဒါဟာနယ္နယ္ရရစကားမဟုတ္ဘူးတဲ့။ က်န္းမာေအာင္ ေနတတ္ဖို႔ လမ္းညႊန္တဲ့။ ခႏၶာကိုယ္ အျပင္မွာပူေန ရင္ အတြင္းမွာ ေအးေနတယ္တဲ့။ အျပင္မွာပူေနရင္ ေခၽြးစုိ႔ေအာင္ ေနတတ္ရတယ္၊ ခႏၶာကိုယ္ထဲက အေအး ဓါတ္ကို ေရေႏြးပူနဲ႔လွမ္းလွမ္းစရတယ္၊ ဒါမွ ေခြ်းစို႔ၿပီး ေနလို႔လည္းေကာင္းတာ။
ခ်မ္းရင္ ေရခ်ဳိး ႏွင္းေတာတိုး။
ရာသီဥတုက ေအးေနရင္ ခႏၶာကိုယ္ရဲ႕အျပင္မွာ ေအးေနၿပီး အတြင္းထဲမွာ ပူေနတယ္။ ခ်မ္းလို႔ ေရမခ်ဳိးရင္ ၾကာေတာ့ ေရေအးေအးေလးထိလိုက္ရင္ ဟပ္ခ်ဳိး ဟပ္ခ်ဳိးနဲ႔ ျဖစ္လာလိမ္မယ္တဲ့။ ခ်မ္းလို႔ ေရခ်ဳိးတဲ့အခါ ခႏၶာ ကိုယ္ေအာက္ပိုင္းကေန ေရေလးနဲ႔ပြတ္ေပး။ အဲ့ဒီကေန အထက္ပိုင္းကို တျဖည္းျဖည္းပြတ္ေပးလိုက္ရင္ ေႏြး လာလိမ့္မယ္။ အေငြ႕ေတြထြက္လာလိမ့္မယ္။ အဲဒီလိုျဖစ္လာရင္ ခ်ိဳးေပေတာ့။ ေဆာင္းတြင္းမွာ ေရေအး ေသာက္။ အထဲကအပူကို ေရေအးနဲ႔ ေတြ႕ထိေပးေတာ့ ဓါတ္က မွ်တသြားေတာ့ ေနလို႔ထိုင္လို႔ေကာင္းသြား တာပဲတဲ့။
ေမာရင္ ေတာင္တက္ ေက်ာက္ခဲရြက္။
ဘာေလးလုပ္လုိက္ လုပ္လိုက္ရင္ အေမာျမန္ေနရင္ ေမာတာေႏွးသြားေအာင္ လမ္းမ်ားမ်ားေလွ်ာက္၊ ေတာင္တက္ ေလ့က်င့္ခန္းမ်ားမ်ားလုပ္ေပးဖို႔ ေျပာတာတဲ့။ အေမာျမန္တာကို ျမန္ေနတဲ့အတိုင္း ထားထား ရင္ ၾကာေတာ့ ေရာဂါရလာေရာ။ နာတာရွည္ျဖစ္လာေရာတဲ့။ ဒါေတြဟာ က်ေနာ္ လိုက္နာက်င့္သုံးေနတဲ့ က်န္းမာေရးလမ္းညႊန္မ်ားပါ။ သိပၸံနည္းက်မွ ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ စိစစ္၍ က်င့္သုံးၾကပါကုန္။
ဆက္လက္ေရးပါအုံးမယ္။
ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားကုိ ကယ္တင္ခဲ့သည့္ ျမန္မာ သေဘၤာ ကပၸတိန္အား ႏုိင္ငံတကာမွ ဂုဏ္ျပဳ
ဇြန္လ (၉) ရက္ ေန႔က ၾကမ္းတမ္း ခက္ထန္ လွသည့္ ပင္လယ္ ျပင္တြင္ ဒုကၡ သည္မ်ားအား သက္စြန္႔ ဆံဖ်ား ကယ္တင္ ႏုိင္ခဲ့သည့္ ျမန္မာ သေဘၤာ ကပၸတိန္ ဦးေဇာ္ေအာင္ အား ႏိုင္ငံတကာ မွ တေလး တစား ခ်ီးက်ဴး ဂုဏ္ျပဳ ေနဆဲ ျဖစ္သည္။ စပိန္ သတင္းစာ မ်ားက ဦးေဇာ္ေအာင္ ၏ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ မွန္ကန္မႈ၊ ရဲ၀ံ့ မႈမ်ားကို တခမ္း တနား ေဖာ္ျပခဲ့ သလို ျမန္မာ့ သတင္း မီဒီယာမ်ား ကလည္း လူသားခ်င္း စာနာ မႈျဖင့္ စြန္႔စား ခဲ့ေသာ ၎၏ စိတ္ထား ႏွင့္ လုပ္ရပ္ကို အေလးထား ဂုဏ္ျပဳခဲ့ ၾကသည္။ ဇြန္လ (၉) ရက္ေန႔က စပိန္ႏိုင္ငံ၊ အေနာက္ေျမာက္ပိုင္း ကမ္းလြန္ မွ ကီလိုမီတာ (၅၅၀) အကြာမွ ရြက္ေလွ တစ္စင္း ထံမွ အေရးေပၚ အကူ အညီ ေတာင္းခံသည့္ SOS သတင္း ေပးပို႔ မႈကို MTM Princess သေဘၤာ ေပၚမွ ဖမ္းယူ ရရွိ ခဲ့သည္။ သေဘၤာသား (၂၂) ဦးအနက္ ကပၸတိန္ အပါအ၀င္ ျမန္မာ သေဘၤာသားခ်ည္း (၂၁)ဦး လုိက္ပါ လာေသာ MTM Princess သည္ အဆိုပါ သတင္း ေပးပို႔ မႈကို ရရွိ ၿပီးေနာက္ သေဘၤာ ကပၸတိန္ ဦးေဇာ္ေအာင္ က ယင္း ဒုကၡသည္ မ်ားအား ကယ္တင္ရန္ သေဘၤာသား မ်ားႏွင့္ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ သလုိ သေဘၤာ ကုမၸဏီ သို႔လည္း အေၾကာင္းၾကား ခဲ့သည္။ ကုမၸဏီ ထံမွ ခြင့္ျပဳခ်က္ ရရွိေသာ အခါ မာရွယ္လ္ကၽြန္း ႏုိင္ငံ အလံ လႊင့္ထူ ထားေသာ MTM Princess သည္ ေဘးေတြ႕ ေနသည့္ အေပ်ာ္စီး အပမ္းေျဖ ရြက္ေလွ Octogon ထံသို႔ ဦးတည္ ခုတ္ေမာင္းခဲ့ ေလေတာ့သည္။
ယင္း ရြက္ေလွ ေပၚတြင္ ၿဗိတိန္ မွ အပမ္းေျဖခရီး ထြက္လာေသာ စံုတြဲ ႏွစ္တြဲ လိုက္ပါလာ ခဲ့ၿပီး ျပင္းထန္ေသာ ရာသီ ဥတုတြင္ ရြက္ေလွ နစ္ျမဳပ္ ခါနီး အေျခ အေန ႀကံဳေနျခင္းေၾကာင့္ SOS အကူအညီ ေတာင္းခံ မႈကို ထုတ္လႊင့္ ခဲ့ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။ ဦးေဇာ္ေအာင္သည္ SOS ေၾကညာ ခ်က္ကို လက္ခံ ရရွိ ခ်ိန္တြင္ မူလ ထုတ္လႊင့္သည္ထက္ (၃) နာရီ ေနာက္က် ေနၿပီ ျဖစ္ေသာ္လည္း ထိုေနရာသို႔ ေရာက္ေအာင္ သြားရန္ ဆံုးျဖတ္ ခဲ့ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။ MTM Princess သည္ Octagon ႏွင့္ ေရမိုင္ (၉) မိုင္ အကြာသို႔ ေရာက္ရွိ ေနျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။ သို႔ေသာ္လည္း ျပင္းထန္ေသာ ေလမုန္တိုင္း ႏွင့္ လိႈင္းမ်ား ေၾကာင့္ လွမ္းျမင္ ရေသာ အေန အထားသည္ ေရမိုင္ (၇) မိုင္ထက္ မပိုခဲ့ေပ။ Octagon ၏ အထက္ ေ၀ဟင္တြင္ ကမ္းေျခေစာင့္ ရဟတ္ယာဥ္ တစ္စင္းက ၀ဲပ်ံ ေနခဲ့ ေသာ္လည္း ျပင္းထန္ လွသည့္ ရာသီဥတုေၾကာင့္ ဒုကၡသည္ မ်ားအား ကယ္တင္ ႏုိင္ျခင္း မရွိခဲ့ ေသာေၾကာင့္ ေနာက္ဆံုး ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ ခ်က္သည္ MTM Princess ကပၸတိန္ ဦးေဇာ္ေအာင္ ထံတြင္သာ က်ေရာက္လာ ခဲ့သည္။ဦးေဇာ္ေအာင္သည္ ပထမ တစ္ႀကိမ္ Octagon sailing ship နားသို႔ ခ်ဥ္းကပ္ခဲ့ ေသာ္လည္း လိႈင္းမ်ား၏ ပုတ္ထုတ္ မႈေၾကာင့္ အဆင္ မေျပဘဲ ေရယာဥ္ ႏွစ္စင္း ကြာထြက္ သြားခဲ့သည္။ MTM Princess မွ သေဘၤာသား မ်ားသည္ အဖြဲ႕ (၃) ခုခြဲကာ ရြက္ေလွအား ဆိုင္းႀကိဳး မ်ားျဖင့္ ခ်ိတ္ဆက္ၿပီး ဆြဲထား ႏိုင္ရန္ အင္တိုက္ အားတိုက္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းခဲ့ ၾကသည္။ ပထမ တစ္ႀကိမ္ ႀကိဳးပမ္း မႈတြင္ မေအာင္ျမင္ခဲ့ ေသာ္လည္း ဒုကၡသည္ ၿဗိတိသွ် လူမ်ိဳး (၄) ဦးအား ၾကမ္းတမ္း ခက္ထန္ လွသည့္ ပင္လယ္ျပင္ႀကီး ထဲတြင္ မထားခဲ့ ႏုိင္ေသာ ဦးေဇာ္ေအာင္ ႏွင့္ သေဘၤာသား မ်ားသည္ မဆုတ္မနစ္ ဆက္လက္ ႀကိဳးပမ္း ၾကသည္။
အခက္ အခဲမ်ား ၾကားမွ ေနာက္ဆံုး ရလဒ္ အျဖစ္ အသက္ (၅၈) ႏွစ္ အရြယ္ အသက္ အႀကီးဆံုး ဒုကၡသည္ ကို ၎တို႔ သည္ MTM Princess သို႔ ဦးစြာ ဆြဲတင္ ႏုိင္ခဲ့သည္။ ထို႔ေနာက္ တြင္ေတာ့ က်န္ရွိသူ (၃) ဦး လံုးအား ေအာင္ျမင္စြာ ကယ္တင္ႏုိင္ ခဲ့သည္။ MTM Princess မွ သူရဲေကာင္း တစ္စု၏ ႀကိဳးပမ္း ေဆာင္ရြက္ မႈကို ကမ္းေျခေစာင့္ ရဟတ္ယာဥ္က ေတာက္ေလွ်ာက ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ ေနခဲ့ ၿပီးေနာက္ ဒုကၡသည္ အားလံုး လံုၿခံဳ သြားေၾကာင္း ေသခ်ာ ခ်ိန္တြင္ ကမ္းေျခသို႔ ပ်ံသန္း ထြက္ခြာ သြားေတာ့ သည္။ ဒီဗြန္တြင္ ေနထိုင္ သည့္ မိုက္ခ္အာႏိုးလ္၊ ဘာဘရာအာႏိုးလ္၊ မစ္ဒ္လန္းစ္ မွ ေဒးဗစ္ဂၽြန္ဆန္ ႏွင့္ အန္ဂ်ယ္လာဂၽြန္ဆန္ တို႔ (၄) ဦးလံုး MTM Princess ႏွင့္ အတူ ေဘးမသီရန္မခ ကမ္းေျခသို႔ ျပန္ေရာက္ခဲ့ ေသာ္လည္း Octagon ရြက္ေလွ ကိုမူ စြန္႔လႊတ္ခဲ့ ရေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။ဇြန္လ ကုန္က ရန္ကုန္ သို႔ ျပန္ေရာက္ လာသည့္ ကပၸတိန္ ဦးေဇာ္ေအာင္ အား မိသားစုက ဂုဏ္ယူ ၀ံ့ၾကြားစြာ ႀကိဳဆိုခဲ့ ၾကသည္။ အဏၰ၀ါ ေရျပင္တြင္ သူရဲေကာင္း ဆန္ဆန္ အားထုတ္ ႀကိဳးပမ္း ခဲ့သည့္ ပုလဲ ႏွင့္ ငါး လုပ္ငန္း ကပၸတိန္ေဟာင္းက ယခု လုပ္ရပ္သည္ ၎၏ တာ၀န္ဟု ခံယူ ထားေၾကာင္း၊ MTM Princess မွ သေဘၤာ သားမ်ား အားလံုး ၎ႏွင့္ လက္တြဲ ညီညီ ႀကိဳးပမ္း မႈေၾကာင့္ ယခု စြမ္းေဆာင္ မႈမ်ိဳး ျပဳလုပ္ ႏုိင္ခဲ့ျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သတင္း မီဒီယာ မ်ားသို႔ ေျပာၾကား ခဲ့သည္။ ယင္းသည္ (၁၉၉၆) ခုႏွစ္ ကတည္းက အရာရွိ တစ္ဦး ျဖစ္လာခဲ့ၿပီး MTM Princess သည္ ၎ တာ၀န္ ယူသည့္ ဒုတိယေျမာက္ သေဘၤာ ျဖစ္သည္။ မိခင္ ျဖစ္သူ၏ ဂုဏ္ယူ ၀မ္းသာစြာ ႀကိဳဆို မႈကို ခံယူ ခဲ့ရသည့္ ကပၸတိန္က မိမိ တို႔၏ လူသားခ်င္း စာနာ မႈျဖင့္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းခဲ့ မႈအတြက္ ၾကည္ႏူး မိေၾကာင္း၊ ထိုႀကိဳးပမ္း မႈေၾကာင့္ ၿဗိတိန္ ႏုိင္ငံက မည္သို႔ ဂုဏ္ျပဳမည္ ဆိုေသာ အခ်က္အား မစဥ္းစား ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း ေျပာၾကား သြားသည္။ Octagon ကိစၥ သည္ ျမန္မာ သေဘၤာသား မ်ား၏ ပင္လယ္ ျပင္တြင္ စြန္႔စား ကယ္တင္ မႈမ်ား အနက္ ပထမဆံုး မဟုတ္ေခ်။ တရုတ္ေတာင္ ပင္လယ္ တြင္ နစ္ျမဳပ္ ေနသည့္ ဗီယက္နမ္ ငါးဖမ္းေလွ တစ္စင္း မွ အမ်ိဳးသမီး တစ္ဦး ကိုလည္း ျမန္မာ သေဘၤာသား မ်ား ကယ္တင္ခဲ့ ဖူးသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္လည္း Octagon ကိစၥ မွာမူ ႏုိင္ငံတကာမွ ျမန္မာ့ သတၱိကို အေလး အနက္ထား အသိ အမွတ္ ျပဳေစမည့္ ႀကီးက်ယ္ေသာ စြမ္းေဆာင္မႈ တစ္ခု ျဖစ္ေစ ခဲ့သည္။ ျမန္မာ့ပ င္လယ္ကူး သေဘၤာသားမ်ား အဖြဲ႕ႀကီးမွ ဦးစိုးမင္းေအာင္က MTM Princess မွ ျမန္မာ သေဘၤာသား မ်ားသည္ ျမန္မာကို ကမာၻသိေအာင္ စြမ္းေဆာင္ျပခဲ့ေၾကာင္း ခ်ီးက်ဴး ေျပာဆိုသြားခဲ့ ေၾကာင္း ပလဲနက္ ၀ပ္ဆိုဒ္တြင္ ေရးသား ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။
ဘ၀ တကၠသိုလ္
(၁)မင္းရဲ႕ ႐ုပ္အေလာင္းဟာ
ျခေသၤ့ဂူထဲမွာ ႐ွိလိမ့္မယ္
အေမွာင္စုန္းစုန္းမွာ
အရာအားလံုး ေမ့ေဖ်ာက္ပစ္
ေနာက္တစ္ေခတ္ မင္းေအာင္ျမင္ေစကြယ္
အက္ကြဲေနေသာလက္မ်ားနဲ႔
ဘုရားသခင္ထံ ငါတို႔ဆုေတာင္း
မင္း.. ေကာင္းရာသုဂတိလားပါေစ..လို႔
ငါတို႔ရဲ႕
ေသြးတစ္စက္ကို ထက္၀က္ခြဲ
မင္းခံတြင္းထဲ
တဲတဲေလးေလွ်ာခ်ၾကည့္ရင္
ႏႈတ္ခမ္းေသမ်ားက
ဖြဖြတိုးတိုးေလး လႈပ္႐ွားေအာ္ျမည္
ဒီ..မို..က..ေရ..စီ..
ဒီမိုကေရစီလို႔ .. ဆိုလိမ့္မယ္
ညီေလးရယ္
ရႏိုင္မယ္ဆိုယင္
မင္းရဲ႕အ႐ိုးတစ္မႈံကို
နိဗၺာန္ဘံုအထိယူၿပီး
ဘုရား႐ွင္ကို ျပၾကည့္ခ်င္တယ္..
မင္းဟာ သူရဲေကာင္းေလးျဖစ္တယ္
မင္းဟာ အာဇာနည္ေလးျဖစ္တယ္
မင္းဟာ ဗမာေက်ာင္းသားေလး.. ျဖစ္တယ္ေလ။
(၂)
ေရငတ္သလို.. ငတ္ခဲ့ရတဲ့
ဗမာျပည္က “လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး”ဟာ
အက်ဥ္းေထာင္ထဲမွာ
သခ်ၤဳ ိင္းေျမမွာ
တရား႐ံုးရဲ႕ ရာဇ၀တ္မႈေတြထဲမွာ.. ႐ွိေနတယ္..
မင္း.. စြန္႔ခြာခဲ့တဲ့
စာသင္ေက်ာင္းကေလး
မင္းသတင္းေတြ ေမးေနၿပီ
မင္းရဲ႕ စာအုပ္ေဟာင္းထဲမွာ
ဆရာမရဲ႕ မွတ္ခ်က္...
မင္းအတြက္...
“ေနာက္ထပ္စာအုပ္အသစ္လဲပါ” တဲ့
စာအုပ္ မလံုေလာက္မႈ
ေဖာင္တိန္ မလံုေလာက္မႈ
မုန္႔စားဆင္းခ်ိန္မွာ ေက်ာင္းခန္းထဲအိပ္ေနမႈ.. စတဲ့
လူမႈကိစၥအ၀၀
မင္းခ်ည္းမွ မဟုတ္ခဲ့ပါဘူးကြယ္…
တိုက္ပြဲမွာ
ခၽြန္ျမစြာ ေတာင္းဆိုႏိုင္ဖို႔
ေခါင္းေလာင္းအိုႀကီးကို ႏႈတ္ဆက္
ခ်ီတက္လာတဲ့ အာဇာနည္ေလးေရ..
ခြပ္ေဒါင္းရဲ႕
တစ္ေၾကာင္းစာခၽြန္
သမိုင္းစဥ္္ကို ထမ္း
ရာဇ၀င္ၾကမ္းခက္ ေသြးစက္႐ႊဲစို
ခုေတာ့..
မင္းရဲ႕ ခံုနံပါတ္ေလး “ငို” ေနၿပီ... ။
ျခေသၤ့ဂူထဲမွာ ႐ွိလိမ့္မယ္
အေမွာင္စုန္းစုန္းမွာ
အရာအားလံုး ေမ့ေဖ်ာက္ပစ္
ေနာက္တစ္ေခတ္ မင္းေအာင္ျမင္ေစကြယ္
အက္ကြဲေနေသာလက္မ်ားနဲ႔
ဘုရားသခင္ထံ ငါတို႔ဆုေတာင္း
မင္း.. ေကာင္းရာသုဂတိလားပါေစ..လို႔
ငါတို႔ရဲ႕
ေသြးတစ္စက္ကို ထက္၀က္ခြဲ
မင္းခံတြင္းထဲ
တဲတဲေလးေလွ်ာခ်ၾကည့္ရင္
ႏႈတ္ခမ္းေသမ်ားက
ဖြဖြတိုးတိုးေလး လႈပ္႐ွားေအာ္ျမည္
ဒီ..မို..က..ေရ..စီ..
ဒီမိုကေရစီလို႔ .. ဆိုလိမ့္မယ္
ညီေလးရယ္
ရႏိုင္မယ္ဆိုယင္
မင္းရဲ႕အ႐ိုးတစ္မႈံကို
နိဗၺာန္ဘံုအထိယူၿပီး
ဘုရား႐ွင္ကို ျပၾကည့္ခ်င္တယ္..
မင္းဟာ သူရဲေကာင္းေလးျဖစ္တယ္
မင္းဟာ အာဇာနည္ေလးျဖစ္တယ္
မင္းဟာ ဗမာေက်ာင္းသားေလး.. ျဖစ္တယ္ေလ။
(၂)
ေရငတ္သလို.. ငတ္ခဲ့ရတဲ့
ဗမာျပည္က “လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး”ဟာ
အက်ဥ္းေထာင္ထဲမွာ
သခ်ၤဳ ိင္းေျမမွာ
တရား႐ံုးရဲ႕ ရာဇ၀တ္မႈေတြထဲမွာ.. ႐ွိေနတယ္..
မင္း.. စြန္႔ခြာခဲ့တဲ့
စာသင္ေက်ာင္းကေလး
မင္းသတင္းေတြ ေမးေနၿပီ
မင္းရဲ႕ စာအုပ္ေဟာင္းထဲမွာ
ဆရာမရဲ႕ မွတ္ခ်က္...
မင္းအတြက္...
“ေနာက္ထပ္စာအုပ္အသစ္လဲပါ” တဲ့
စာအုပ္ မလံုေလာက္မႈ
ေဖာင္တိန္ မလံုေလာက္မႈ
မုန္႔စားဆင္းခ်ိန္မွာ ေက်ာင္းခန္းထဲအိပ္ေနမႈ.. စတဲ့
လူမႈကိစၥအ၀၀
မင္းခ်ည္းမွ မဟုတ္ခဲ့ပါဘူးကြယ္…
တိုက္ပြဲမွာ
ခၽြန္ျမစြာ ေတာင္းဆိုႏိုင္ဖို႔
ေခါင္းေလာင္းအိုႀကီးကို ႏႈတ္ဆက္
ခ်ီတက္လာတဲ့ အာဇာနည္ေလးေရ..
ခြပ္ေဒါင္းရဲ႕
တစ္ေၾကာင္းစာခၽြန္
သမိုင္းစဥ္္ကို ထမ္း
ရာဇ၀င္ၾကမ္းခက္ ေသြးစက္႐ႊဲစို
ခုေတာ့..
မင္းရဲ႕ ခံုနံပါတ္ေလး “ငို” ေနၿပီ... ။
(၃)
ေ႐ႊဘုန္းေရာင္လက္၀င္းတဲ့
ႏွင္းျပာျပာမနက္ဦးမ်ားမွာ
ဒို႔ ကမၻာကို
ျပန္လာဦးမွာလား.. ဟင္...
“အမ်ဳိး ဘာသာ သာသနာအတြက္
သား .. ႏႈတ္ဆက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္” တဲ့
မင္းထားခဲ့တဲ့ စာတိုကေလး
မင္းတို႔ အိမ္ကို ေပးလိုက္ၿပီ
ယိုင္ယဲ့ က်ဥ္းေျမာင္းေနတဲ့
မင္းတို႔ရဲ႕ အိမ္ကေလးထဲမွာ
မင္းရဲ႕ ေဖေဖဟာ
လက္သီးကို က်စ္က်စ္ပါေအာင္
ဆုပ္ထားတယ္..
မင္းရဲ႕ ေမေမဟာ
အခန္းေထာင့္မွာ
ၿငိမ္သက္စြာထိုင္ၿပီး
မ်က္ရည္စီးေၾကာင္းတစ္ခုကို အေဖာ္ျပဳ
(ရင္ထဲမွာေတာ့)
သား ျပန္ “လု” ေန႐ွာေတာ့မယ္။
“ေကာင္းမြန္စြာ
သၿဂၤဳ ိဟ္ၿပီးစီးပါေၾကာင္း” .. တဲ့
အေလာင္းကိုမွ
မျမင္ရ မေတြ႕ရ
ဘယ္ေနရာမွာ က်ဆံုးခဲ့သလဲ ညီေလးရယ္...
ေဒါင္း႐ုပ္ကေလးလိုပဲ
မင္းရဲ႕ အတၳဳပၸတၱိဟာ
အေတာင္ပံပါတယ္
တိုက္ပြဲ၀င္တယ္
ႏြယ္လိုပတ္ခ်ည္ ခိုင္က်ည္နစ္စူး
ေရာက္ေလရာဘ၀အဆက္ဆက္မွာ
မင္း.. ေမာ္ဖူးရျခင္းမ်ားစြာနဲ႔
ကင္းေ၀းပါလိမ့္မယ္ ... ။
(၄)
အိမ္ထရံမွာ
တခါတခါ မင္းမ်က္ရည္သုတ္တဲ့
စုတ္ခ်ာခ်ာ လြယ္အိတ္ကေလး
ေခတ္ေဘးေခတ္ဒဏ္ သင့္ေန႐ွာတယ္..
“ေခတ္လြတ္လပ္မွ
ေက်ာင္းသားလြတ္လပ္မယ္”
အ႐ြယ္နဲ႔ မလိုက္ေအာင္ေတြး
“ေက်ာင္းသားအေရး”ဆိုတာ
မင္းမွာ မ႐ွိခဲ့ပါဘူး
“ဘုရားေခတ္မွာဆိုယင္
ရဟႏ ၱာျဖစ္တဲ့အထိ လိမၼာမယ္”
ဒါေပမဲ့ ့...
“အေမွာင္ေခတ္မွာေတာ့
အာဏာ႐ွင္ကို ဖီဆန္တယ္”
ညီေလးရယ္ မင္းသိပ္မွန္တယ္..
ခံယူခ်က္ကို
အေျမာက္ဆံလို ပစ္ေဖာက္
အေ၀းဆံုး အျမင့္ဆံုး
ဘ၀တဆံုး မင္းေရာက္ခဲ့တယ္..
စစ္ေမာင္းသံၾကားရင္
ခြာတ႐ွပ္႐ွပ္ျဖစ္ခ်င္တဲ့
ေခတ္ရဲ႕ စစ္ျမင္းကေလးလို မင္းဟာ
ရာဇ၀င္ကို ထိုးခြဲ
တိုက္ပြဲကို ဒုန္းေဖာက္
မီးေတာက္ဆူးျခစ္
ေခတ္သစ္ပူေဇာ္
ေတာ္လွန္တဲ့ ညီေလးေရ
ခြပ္ေဒါင္းအေပါင္းရဲ႕
ေကာင္းခ်ီးၾသဘာသံေ၀
မင္းေရာက္ရာအရပ္က ၾကားပါေစ...
စစ္ေခြးေတြက ဒီလိုတစစီ ျဖိဳဖ်က္ခဲ့ၾကတာ
(၅)
ညီေလးေရ
ရာဇ၀င္ေရးရာ စာအုပ္ပိတ္
ေတာ္လွန္ေရးမွာ “အိပ္”ေတာ့ေနာ္
စိတ္ခ်သြားပါ
အရာအားလံုးကို ေမ့ေဖ်ာက္
ေသြးနဲ႔တည္ေဆာက္တဲ့ အုတ္ဂူတစ္လံုး
တေလာကလံုး လင္းေစအားကြယ္..
တိမ္သား႐ိုးရီ
ဒီမိုကေရစီ ေတာင္တက္လမ္းက
ခပ္ၾကမ္းၾကမ္းေက်ာက္ေလးေတြအျဖစ္
စြဲနစ္က်န္တင္လို႔ .. ေအာင္ျမင္မွာပါ
ဗမာျပည္အတြက္
လိုအပ္တဲ့
“လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးနဲ႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီ”
အေ႐ွ႕ဘက္အရပ္မွာ
ျခေသၤ့ေတြ ခ်ီလာၿပီ
စစ္ျမင္းေတြ ၿပိဳင္လာၿပီ
ခြပ္ေဒါင္းေတြ ပ်ံလာေနၿပီေလ..
ညီေလးရယ္
ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာ
ေအးျမစြာ
႐ွင္းသန္႔စြာ
ေနာက္ဘ၀မွာ ျမင္ေယာင္ၾကည့္စမ္းကြယ္
ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္
ယမ္းေငြ႕တလူလူၾကားထဲမွာ
မင္းခ်စ္တဲ့ ဗမာျပည္ႀကီးဟာ
ေဒါင္းအလံကို ပန္းလို ပန္လို႔ လွလို႔..
ေၾသာ္..
ေဒါင္းအလံကို ပန္းလို ပန္လို႔
လွလို႔ပါပဲ .. ညီေလးရယ္.... ။ ။
ေ႐ႊဘုန္းေရာင္လက္၀င္းတဲ့
ႏွင္းျပာျပာမနက္ဦးမ်ားမွာ
ဒို႔ ကမၻာကို
ျပန္လာဦးမွာလား.. ဟင္...
“အမ်ဳိး ဘာသာ သာသနာအတြက္
သား .. ႏႈတ္ဆက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္” တဲ့
မင္းထားခဲ့တဲ့ စာတိုကေလး
မင္းတို႔ အိမ္ကို ေပးလိုက္ၿပီ
ယိုင္ယဲ့ က်ဥ္းေျမာင္းေနတဲ့
မင္းတို႔ရဲ႕ အိမ္ကေလးထဲမွာ
မင္းရဲ႕ ေဖေဖဟာ
လက္သီးကို က်စ္က်စ္ပါေအာင္
ဆုပ္ထားတယ္..
မင္းရဲ႕ ေမေမဟာ
အခန္းေထာင့္မွာ
ၿငိမ္သက္စြာထိုင္ၿပီး
မ်က္ရည္စီးေၾကာင္းတစ္ခုကို အေဖာ္ျပဳ
(ရင္ထဲမွာေတာ့)
သား ျပန္ “လု” ေန႐ွာေတာ့မယ္။
“ေကာင္းမြန္စြာ
သၿဂၤဳ ိဟ္ၿပီးစီးပါေၾကာင္း” .. တဲ့
အေလာင္းကိုမွ
မျမင္ရ မေတြ႕ရ
ဘယ္ေနရာမွာ က်ဆံုးခဲ့သလဲ ညီေလးရယ္...
ေဒါင္း႐ုပ္ကေလးလိုပဲ
မင္းရဲ႕ အတၳဳပၸတၱိဟာ
အေတာင္ပံပါတယ္
တိုက္ပြဲ၀င္တယ္
ႏြယ္လိုပတ္ခ်ည္ ခိုင္က်ည္နစ္စူး
ေရာက္ေလရာဘ၀အဆက္ဆက္မွာ
မင္း.. ေမာ္ဖူးရျခင္းမ်ားစြာနဲ႔
ကင္းေ၀းပါလိမ့္မယ္ ... ။
(၄)
အိမ္ထရံမွာ
တခါတခါ မင္းမ်က္ရည္သုတ္တဲ့
စုတ္ခ်ာခ်ာ လြယ္အိတ္ကေလး
ေခတ္ေဘးေခတ္ဒဏ္ သင့္ေန႐ွာတယ္..
“ေခတ္လြတ္လပ္မွ
ေက်ာင္းသားလြတ္လပ္မယ္”
အ႐ြယ္နဲ႔ မလိုက္ေအာင္ေတြး
“ေက်ာင္းသားအေရး”ဆိုတာ
မင္းမွာ မ႐ွိခဲ့ပါဘူး
“ဘုရားေခတ္မွာဆိုယင္
ရဟႏ ၱာျဖစ္တဲ့အထိ လိမၼာမယ္”
ဒါေပမဲ့ ့...
“အေမွာင္ေခတ္မွာေတာ့
အာဏာ႐ွင္ကို ဖီဆန္တယ္”
ညီေလးရယ္ မင္းသိပ္မွန္တယ္..
ခံယူခ်က္ကို
အေျမာက္ဆံလို ပစ္ေဖာက္
အေ၀းဆံုး အျမင့္ဆံုး
ဘ၀တဆံုး မင္းေရာက္ခဲ့တယ္..
စစ္ေမာင္းသံၾကားရင္
ခြာတ႐ွပ္႐ွပ္ျဖစ္ခ်င္တဲ့
ေခတ္ရဲ႕ စစ္ျမင္းကေလးလို မင္းဟာ
ရာဇ၀င္ကို ထိုးခြဲ
တိုက္ပြဲကို ဒုန္းေဖာက္
မီးေတာက္ဆူးျခစ္
ေခတ္သစ္ပူေဇာ္
ေတာ္လွန္တဲ့ ညီေလးေရ
ခြပ္ေဒါင္းအေပါင္းရဲ႕
ေကာင္းခ်ီးၾသဘာသံေ၀
မင္းေရာက္ရာအရပ္က ၾကားပါေစ...
စစ္ေခြးေတြက ဒီလိုတစစီ ျဖိဳဖ်က္ခဲ့ၾကတာ
(၅)
ညီေလးေရ
ရာဇ၀င္ေရးရာ စာအုပ္ပိတ္
ေတာ္လွန္ေရးမွာ “အိပ္”ေတာ့ေနာ္
စိတ္ခ်သြားပါ
အရာအားလံုးကို ေမ့ေဖ်ာက္
ေသြးနဲ႔တည္ေဆာက္တဲ့ အုတ္ဂူတစ္လံုး
တေလာကလံုး လင္းေစအားကြယ္..
တိမ္သား႐ိုးရီ
ဒီမိုကေရစီ ေတာင္တက္လမ္းက
ခပ္ၾကမ္းၾကမ္းေက်ာက္ေလးေတြအျဖစ္
စြဲနစ္က်န္တင္လို႔ .. ေအာင္ျမင္မွာပါ
ဗမာျပည္အတြက္
လိုအပ္တဲ့
“လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးနဲ႔ ဒီမိုကေရစီ”
အေ႐ွ႕ဘက္အရပ္မွာ
ျခေသၤ့ေတြ ခ်ီလာၿပီ
စစ္ျမင္းေတြ ၿပိဳင္လာၿပီ
ခြပ္ေဒါင္းေတြ ပ်ံလာေနၿပီေလ..
ညီေလးရယ္
ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာ
ေအးျမစြာ
႐ွင္းသန္႔စြာ
ေနာက္ဘ၀မွာ ျမင္ေယာင္ၾကည့္စမ္းကြယ္
ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္
ယမ္းေငြ႕တလူလူၾကားထဲမွာ
မင္းခ်စ္တဲ့ ဗမာျပည္ႀကီးဟာ
ေဒါင္းအလံကို ပန္းလို ပန္လို႔ လွလို႔..
ေၾသာ္..
ေဒါင္းအလံကို ပန္းလို ပန္လို႔
လွလို႔ပါပဲ .. ညီေလးရယ္.... ။ ။
ေ႐ႊဘုန္းလူ
နိွင္ငံေရး စည္း၀ိုင္း
တူေမာင္ညိဳ။ ဇြန္လ ၂၉၊ ၂၀၁၀
ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီးကိုယ္တုိင္ ေျဖရမယ့္ေမးခြန္း ျဖစ္ေနပါတယ္။ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီးက သက္တမ္းေစ့႐ုံတင္ မကဘူး၊ အိပ္စပုိင္ယားေတာင္ ျဖစ္ေနပါၿပီ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ကိုင္ထားတဲ့ အာဏာနဲ႔တပ္ကို လက္လႊတ္လိုက္ရင္ ဘာျဖစ္သြားႏိုင္တယ္ဆိုတာ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီး ေကာင္းေကာင္းသိတယ္။ ဒီအသက္ဒီအရြယ္မွာ “အမ်ားဗိုလ္လူပင္စင္ယူ” ေပမယ့္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီး မယူဝံ့ပါဘူး။ ကာကြယ္ေရးဦးစီးခ်ဳပ္ လုပ္ခ်င္သူေတြက ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီးေနာက္မွာ တန္းစီေနပါတယ္။ တစ္ေယာက္ထဲလည္း မဟုတ္ဘူး။ ဒီကိစၥဟာ စစ္အုပ္စု ထိပ္သီးအာဏာပုိင္အသုိင္းအထဲက အဆံုးအျဖတ္အက်ဆံုး ကိစၥတစ္ခုျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
“နံပတ္ဝမ္း” ဆိုတာ တစ္ေယာက္ထဲဘဲျဖစ္ရမယ္ မဟုတ္လား။ ေရွ႕က နံပတ္ဝမ္းက အုိမင္းလွၿပီ။ ေနာက္မွာ နံပတ္ဝမ္း အေလာင္း အလ်ာေတြ တန္းစီေနၿပီ။ ထင္ျမင္ယူဆခ်က္ေတြကေတာ့ အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးၾကားေနရတာပါပဲ။ ဘယ္သူဘာျဖစ္လာမလဲဆိုတဲ့ ဒီပြဲရဲ႕အဆံုးအျဖတ္ကို ဘယ္သူမွ တိတိက်က်ေျပာႏုိင္မွာ မဟုတ္ဘူး။ အေျဖထြက္လာေတာ့မွသာ ေၾသာ္ ဒီလိုကိုးလို႔ မွတ္ခ်က္ခ်ၾကရမွာပါ။ ဒါကိုေတာ့ ေငြေရာင္ပိတ္ ကားေပၚမွာဆက္လက္ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ဖိုထားခဲ့ၾကပါစုိ႔။
အခုမွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြ လႈပ္ရွားလာေနၾကတယ္။ လႈပ္ရွားလိုက္ေတာ့ အသံေတြထြက္လာတယ္။ ထြက္လာတ့ဲအသံအမ်ားစုက မတရားဘူး၊ မညီမွ်ဘူး၊ မမွ်တဘူးဆိုတဲ့ အသံေတြပဲျဖစ္တယ္။ သူတို႔က အခုမွ စုကာစဖြဲ႔ကာစ ပါတီေတြဆိုေတာ့ ေငြေၾကး၊ စည္း႐ံုး ဖြဲ႔စည္းေရး၊ သြားေရးလာေရးစတဲ့ ဘက္ေပါင္းစံုမွာ အခက္အခဲေတြ ရွိေနတယ္။ အမ်ားစုက အမတ္ေလာင္း (၁၀၀) ဝင္ေရြးႏုိင္မယ့္ အေျခအေန မရွိၾကဘူး။
သူတုိ႔ ပထမဆံုးႀကံဳရတာ ရက္ေပါင္း (၉၀) အတြင္း လူ (၁၀၀၀) သုိ႔မဟုတ္ (၅၀၀) ျပည့္မီေအာင္ စုေဆာင္းၾကဖို႔ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီလိုစုေဆာင္းေရးခရီးစဥ္မွာပဲ (စရဖ)ေထာက္လွမ္းေရး၊ (SB) ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးေတြက မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြ သြားေလရာမွာ လူလံုးျပေနၾကလုိ႔ မထိပ္သာမလန္႔သာျဖစ္ရတာေတြ၊ ရပ္ရြာျပည္သူမ်ားက စိုးရြံ႕ထိပ္လန္႔မႈေတြ ျဖစ္ရတာေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ေဝဖန္ေျပာဆိုေနတာ ၾကားေနရပါတယ္။
မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြကတခ်ဳိ႕က “ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ပါတီ” ကို ၿပိဳင္ဘက္လုိ႔ သေဘာထားေၾကာင္း ေျပာသံလည္း ၾကားလိုက္ရပါတယ္။ ဒီလိုေျပာဆိုေနၾကတာေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ပါတီဘက္က ျပန္ေျပာသံ မၾကားရေသးပါဘူး။ မတူလို႔/ မမႈေလာက္လို႔ ျပန္မေျပာတာ လားေတာ့ မသိပါဘူး။ စစ္အုပ္စု အေမတူအေဖကြဲ (တစည) အကိုႀကီးက ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ညီေလးကို ၿပိဳင္ဘက္လို သေဘာထားတယ္ လို႔ေျပာသံလည္း ၾကားရပါတယ္။ ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ညီေလး ပါတီဖြဲ႔တာက (မဆလ) ကေန (တစည) အျဖစ္ ဘဝေျပာင္းတာထက္ ပိုၿပီးေျဗာင္က်တယ္။ ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ညီေလးက မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီအားလံုးထက္ ေခါင္းေရာ၊ ေျခေရာ၊ လက္ေရာ ကဲတဲ့သာတဲ့ အရွင္ေမြးေန႔ခ်င္းႀကီး လူလြန္မသား ညီေလးျဖစ္တယ္။ စစ္အုပ္စုရဲ႕အေမြခံေျချပဳပါတီျဖစ္တယ္။ ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ပါတီအတြက္ လူ(၁၀၀၀) ရဖို႔ဆိုတာ ငွက္ေပ်ာသီးအခြံႏႊာရတာကမွ ခက္ေနပါလိမ့္ဦးမယ္။
ႀကံ့ဖြ႔ံက သူ႔အဖြဲ႔ဝင္အင္အား ၂၄ သန္း ေက်ာ္ရွိတယ္လို႔ ထုတ္ေျပာဖူးတယ္။ ဒီပမာဏက တုိင္းျပည္လူဦးေရစုစုေပါင္း (၅၄ သန္းေက်ာ္)ရဲ႕ ၄၄ ရာခုိင္ႏႈန္းေက်ာ္ရွိပါတယ္။ ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ေတြဟာ ေတာင္သူလယ္သမားေတြထဲမွာ ၃၅ ဒသမ ၆၆ ရာခုိင္ႏႈန္း၊ ေက်ာင္းသားလူငယ္ထဲမွာ ၂၉ ဒသမ ၃၂ ရာခုိင္ႏႈန္း၊ အလုပ္သမားထဲမွာ ၂၅ ဒသမ ၁၂ ရာခုိင္ႏႈန္း အသီးသီးရွိတယ္လို႔ ၂၀၀၇ ခုႏွစ္၊ မတ္လ ၂၆ ရက္ေန႔က ေနျပည္ေတာ္မွာ ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔က လုပ္တဲ့သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပြဲမွာ ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ဌာနခ်ဳပ္တာဝန္ရွိသူ ေဒၚသိန္းသိန္းေက်ာ္က ထုတ္ေဖာ္ေျပာခဲ့ဖူးတယ္။ ဒီစာရင္းက လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ ၃ ႏွစ္ ေက်ာ္က စာရင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ စစ္တပ္နဲ႔ ဝန္ထမ္းေတြထဲက ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔အင္အားေတြ မပါေသးဘူး။ အေဆာက္အဦး၊ ေငြေၾကး၊ စည္း႐ံုးဖြဲ႔စည္းမႈစတာေတြ မပါေသးဘူး။
ဒီေလာက္အထိ ကိုးကားျပရတာက ဒီကေန႔ မွတ္ပံုတင္ၾကတဲ့ပါတီေတြနဲ႔ (နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စုတုိက္႐ုိက္အေျချပဳ အေမြခံႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ပါတီ အေနအထားဟာ မိုးနဲ႔ေျမလို ကြာလွတယ္ဆိုတာ ထင္ရွားေစခ်င္လို႔ပါ။ ၿပီးေတာ့ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဆိုတာကလည္း စစ္အုပ္စု စိတ္တုိင္းက် ေရးဆြဲအတည္ျပဳထားတဲ့ ၂၀၀၈ အေျခခံဥပေဒစည္းဝိုင္းထဲမွာ ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္ကစားၾကရမွာ မဟုတ္လား။ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေကာ္မရွင္နဲ႔ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဆိုင္ရာ ဥပေဒေတြဆိုတာေတြကလည္း (နအဖ) စိတ္ႀကိဳက္ဖြဲ႔စည္းျပဌာန္းေပးထားတာေတြပဲ မဟုတ္ပါလား။ ဒီလိုမတရားတဲ့ တစ္ဘက္သတ္က်လြန္းလွတဲ့ အေျခအေန အခ်က္အလက္ ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္မွာ မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြအႏုိင္ရဖို႔ဆိုတာ ေဝးလြန္းလွပါတယ္။ မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီတစ္ခုက ေျပာေနသလို “လူထုတိုက္ပြဲပံုစံနဲဲ႔ ျဖတ္သန္းရမယ္” ဆိုတာေလာက္နဲ႔ မျဖစ္ႏုိင္ဘူးလို႔ ေျပာခ်င္တာပါ။
ဒါ့အျပင္မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြရဲ႕ “သက္ေန” နဲ႔ ကံၾကမၼာဟာ ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီမ်ား မွတ္ပံုတင္ျခင္းဥပေဒနဲ႔ သိန္းစိုးေကာ္မရွင္ရဲ႕ လက္ဝယ္မွာရွိေနတဲ့ အခ်က္ပါဘဲ။
မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြရဲ႕ “ျဖစ္- တည္- ပ်က္” ကို သိန္းစုိးေကာ္မရွင္က ျပဳျပင္စီရင္ဖန္တီးမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေကာ္မရွင္က “ျဖစ္” ဆိုရင္ “ျဖစ္” ရမယ္။ “တည္” ဆိုရင္ “တည္” ရမယ္။ “ပ်က္” ဆိုရင္ “ပ်က္” ရလိမ့္မယ္။ ဘယ္သူေတြက ျငင္းပယ္လြန္ဆန္ဝံ့မွာလဲ။ “ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေကာ္မရွင္၏ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ႏွင့္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ခ်က္မ်ားသည္ အၿပီးအျပတ္ျဖစ္ရမည္” (Final & Conclusive) အာဏာကုန္ ေပးအပ္ထားၿပီး ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေတာ္တန္တိတ္။ ဘယ္သူအတန္႔တက္ဝံ့သလဲ။
ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ပါတီ လက္ရွိအေနအထားနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ၿပီး မရွင္းလင္းတာေတြ တရားမွ်တမႈမရွိတဲ့၊ တစ္ဖက္သတ္က်တဲ့ အေနအထားေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြက ေၾကညာခ်က္ေတြ ထုတ္ျပန္တာ၊ မီဒီယာေတြမွာ ေျပာဆိုတာေတြၾကားေနရေပမယ့္ သိန္းစိုးေကာ္မရွင္က ဘာမွ် အေရးယူေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးတာမရွိပါဘူး။
၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဟာ မစခင္ကပဲ မညီမွ်မႈေတြ၊ မတရားမႈေတြ၊ အႏုိင္ထက္က်င့္မႈေတြနဲ႔ျပည့္ႏွက္ေနတယ္ဆိုတာ ထင္ျမင္ယူဆခ်က္သက္သက္၊ သံသယသက္သက္မွ် မဟုတ္ေတာ့ပါဘူး။ မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြရဲ႕ မ်က္ျမင္ကိုယ္ေတြ႔ျဖစ္ေနပါၿပီ။
မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြေတာင္းဆိုေနတဲ့ လြတ္လပ္ၿပီးတရားမွ်တတဲ့ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဆိုတာ ေလထဲမွာပဲ လြင့္ပ်ယ္သြားပါလိမ့္မယ္။
လြတ္လပ္ၿပီးတရားမွ်တဲ့ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲျဖစ္ဖို႔ဆိုရင္ အနိမ့္ဆံုးအားျဖင့္ ၂၀၀၈ အေျခခံဥပေဒ ျပန္လည္သံုးသပ္ ျပင္ဆင္ေရး၊ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဆိုင္ရာ ဥပေဒ ၅ ရပ္ ျပင္ဆင္ေရး၊ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ေကာ္မရွင္ကို သမာသမတ္ရွိသူမ်ားျဖင့္ ျပန္လည္ျပင္ဆင္ဖြဲ႔စည္းေရး၊ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၊ ခြန္ထြန္းဦး၊ စုိင္းညြန္႔လြင္၊ မင္းကိုႏုိင္၊ ကိုကိုႀကီးအပါအဝင္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား အားလံုးလႊတ္ေပးေရးဆိုတဲ့ အဆင့္က စတင္ရပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ဒီလိုအေျခခံေတြ အခ်က္အလက္ေတြ မရွိဘဲ။ လြတ္လပ္ၿပီး တရားမွ်တဲ့ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ေမွ်ာ္လင့္လို႔ မျဖစ္ႏုိင္ပါဘူး။ ေငြကုန္လူပမ္းၿပီး ျပည္သူမ်က္မုန္းက်ိဳးတာပဲ အဖတ္တင္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။
ဒါေၾကာင့္ (နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စု စပြန္္ဆာအတုိင္းသာ တစ္သေဝမတိမ္း ဆက္သြားၾကမယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ပါတီပဲ အႏုိင္ရပါလိမ့္မယ္။ လႊတ္ေတာ္ဆိုတာလည္း အရပ္ဝတ္လဲထားတဲ့ စစ္သားနဲ႔ ယူနီေဖာင္းဝတ္ထားတဲ့စစ္သားေတြရဲ႕ စကားေျပာဆိုင္ပဲ ျဖစ္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ေနရာအခ်ိဳ႕မွာ အေရြးခ်ယ္ခံရမယ့္ မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီမ်ားက လႊတ္ေတာ္အမတ္မ်ားအဖို႔ကေတာ့ နတ္ကရာ ၾကည့္ေမာေနရမယ့္ကိန္းပဲ ဆိုက္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။
(နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စု စပြန္ဆာေအာက္မွာ ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးေတာ့လုပ္ၾကရပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ဒီလိုလုပ္တဲ့ေနရမွာ စစ္အုပ္စု စိတ္တိုင္းက်ဆြဲေပးထားတဲ့ စည္းဝိုင္းထဲက ႏုိင္ငံေရးသာလုပ္ေနမယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ ဘာမွျဖစ္လာႏုိင္မွာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ အဲဒီစည္းဝိုင္းထဲမွာ တဝဲလည္လည္ပဲ ျဖစ္ေနပါလိမ့္မယ္။ လႊတ္ေတာ္ထဲမွာ အရပ္ဝတ္လဲထားတဲ့စစ္သားနဲ႔ ယူနီေဖာင္းဝတ္ထားတဲ့ စစ္သားအျပန္ အလွန္စကားမ်ားတာကို ထိုင္နားေထာင္ေနရပါလိမ့္မယ္။
ဒါေၾကာင့္ (နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စုစိတ္တုိင္းၾက ေရးဆြဲထားတဲ့ စည္းဝိုင္းကိုေဖာက္ထြက္ရပါလိမ့္မယ္။ (နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စုေရးဆြဲထားတဲ့ စည္းဝိုင္းထဲ ပိုမိုက်ယ္ဝန္းတဲ့၊ လြတ္လပ္မႈနဲ႔ တရားမွ်တမႈပိုမိုရွိၿပီး၊ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအင္အားစု အားလုံးပါဝင္ႏိုင္မယ့္၊ ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္ႏုိင္မယ့္ စည္းဝိုင္းသစ္ကို ေရးဆြဲဖန္တီးရပါလိမ့္မယ္။ အဲဒီလုပ္ငန္းကသာလွ်င္ ယေန႔ကာလအတြက္ အဓိကက်တဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံေရးလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ခ်ဳပ္ေျပာရရင္ ၂၀၀၈ အေျခခံဥပေဒ တိုက္ဖ်က္ေရး ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
တခ်ိန္မွာ တခ်ိဳ႕က ႏုိင္ငံေရးဆိုတာ “မစားေကာင္းတဲ့အသီး” ၊ “ဘဝပ်က္သြားမယ္” ဆိုၿပီး ကိုယ္တစ္ေယာက္ထဲ ေၾကာက္အား ပုိ႐ံုတင္မကဘူး၊ အျခားတက္ႂကြလႈပ္ရွားလိုသူေတြကိုပါ တဖက္လွည့္နဲ႔ တားျမစ္ေခ်ာက္လွန္႔တတ္ၾကပါေသးတယ္။ (နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စု စပြန္ဆာလုပ္ေပးတဲ့ စည္းဝိုင္းထဲကႏုိင္ငံေရးပဲ လုပ္ေနမယ္ဆိုရင္ အႏၱရာယ္ခပ္သိမ္းကင္းၿငိမ္းႏုိင္မယ္လို႔ ဘယ္သူေျပာဝံ့သလဲ။
ႏုိင္ငံေရးလုပ္တယ္ဆိုတာ ေခ်ာင္းသာကမ္းေျခ သဲေသာင္ေျမေပၚမွာ အပန္းေျဖလမ္းေလွ်ာက္တာမွ မဟုတ္တာ။
(တူေမာင္ညိဳ)
၂၀၁၀ ဇြန္
(နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စု စပြန္ဆာလုပ္တဲ့ “ႏုိင္ငံေရးအခင္းအက်င္း” ကေတာ့ တစ္စတစ္စ အသက္ဝင္လို႔ လာေနပါၿပီ။
မွတ္ပံုတင္ၿပီးတဲ့ ပါတီစုစုေပါင္းကလည္း (၃၃) ပါတီ ရွိလာေနပါၿပီ။ ဒီလိုမွတ္ပံုတင္ၾကတဲ့ပါတီေတြထဲမွာ ျမန္မာျပည္ေျမာက္ဖ်ား ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္က ကခ်င္ပါတီေတြကေတာ့ “တည္ေထာင္ခြင့္” လည္းမက်၊ “မွတ္ပံုတင္ခြင့္” လည္း မရေသးပါဘူး။ ဒီပံုအတုိင္းသာဆိုရင္ေတာ့ (နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စုရဲ႕ “ပါတီစံု” ဆိုတာ ကခ်င္ပါတီေတြ မပါဝင္ရတဲ့ ပါတီစံုလို႔ ေျပာရေတာ့မယ္ ထင္တယ္။ ကယားပါတီ တည္ေထာင္တယ္/ မွတ္ပံုတင္တယ္လို႔လည္း မေတြ႔မိ မၾကားမိပါဘူး။
အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမုိကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္(NLD) ကိုေတာ့ “NLD ပါတီေဟာင္း” ဆိုၿပီး မစၥတာကပ္ကင္းဘဲ လာစဥ္က (နအဖ) ေျပာခြင့္ရ အာဏာပုိင္က ထည့္သြင္းေျပာဆိုသြားတာ ၾကားလုိက္ရပါတယ္။ တည္ေထာင္ခြင့္ေလွ်ာက္မယ့္ဒီခ်ဳပ္ထဲက “အပဲ့” ကို NLD ပါတီသစ္လို႔ ရည္ ရြယ္ခ်င္ပံုပါပဲ။ ဝံသာႏု NLD ပါတီ ဆိုတာလည္း မွတ္ပံုတင္ထားၿပီးပါၿပီ။
ဘယ္သူမွအတိအက်မေျပာႏုိင္တာ တစ္ခုရွိပါေသးတယ္။ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဘယ္လ/ ဘယ္ေန႔ရက္မွာ က်င္းပမွာလဲ။ ဂ်င္ဝဘ္က (၁၀/၁၀/၁၀) တဲ့။ (တစည) ကေတာ့ “ေအာက္- ႏို- ဒီ” တစ္လလမွာ ျဖစ္ႏုိင္တယ္တဲ့။ ခန္႔မွန္းေခ်ပဲ ေျပာႏုိင္ၾကတယ္။ ဘယ္သူမွ ေန႔ရက္အတိအက်မေျပာႏုိင္ပါဘူး။ အမ်ိဳးသားေရးဦးဝင္းႏုိင္ကေတာ့ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ၂၀၁၁ သုိ႔ ေရႊ႕ေျပာင္းဖို႔ေျပာေနတယ္။
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေန႔ရက္အတိအက်ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာႏုိင္ေရးထက္ ပိုလို႔အေရးႀကီးတဲ့ ကိစၥတစ္ခုရွိပါေသးတယ္။ သမၼတအျဖစ္ဘယ္သူ႔ကိုတင္မလဲ။
ကာကြယ္ေရးဦးစီးခ်ဳပ္ ဘယ္သူလုပ္မလဲ။မွတ္ပံုတင္ၿပီးတဲ့ ပါတီစုစုေပါင္းကလည္း (၃၃) ပါတီ ရွိလာေနပါၿပီ။ ဒီလိုမွတ္ပံုတင္ၾကတဲ့ပါတီေတြထဲမွာ ျမန္မာျပည္ေျမာက္ဖ်ား ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္က ကခ်င္ပါတီေတြကေတာ့ “တည္ေထာင္ခြင့္” လည္းမက်၊ “မွတ္ပံုတင္ခြင့္” လည္း မရေသးပါဘူး။ ဒီပံုအတုိင္းသာဆိုရင္ေတာ့ (နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စုရဲ႕ “ပါတီစံု” ဆိုတာ ကခ်င္ပါတီေတြ မပါဝင္ရတဲ့ ပါတီစံုလို႔ ေျပာရေတာ့မယ္ ထင္တယ္။ ကယားပါတီ တည္ေထာင္တယ္/ မွတ္ပံုတင္တယ္လို႔လည္း မေတြ႔မိ မၾကားမိပါဘူး။
အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမုိကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္(NLD) ကိုေတာ့ “NLD ပါတီေဟာင္း” ဆိုၿပီး မစၥတာကပ္ကင္းဘဲ လာစဥ္က (နအဖ) ေျပာခြင့္ရ အာဏာပုိင္က ထည့္သြင္းေျပာဆိုသြားတာ ၾကားလုိက္ရပါတယ္။ တည္ေထာင္ခြင့္ေလွ်ာက္မယ့္ဒီခ်ဳပ္ထဲက “အပဲ့” ကို NLD ပါတီသစ္လို႔ ရည္ ရြယ္ခ်င္ပံုပါပဲ။ ဝံသာႏု NLD ပါတီ ဆိုတာလည္း မွတ္ပံုတင္ထားၿပီးပါၿပီ။
ဘယ္သူမွအတိအက်မေျပာႏုိင္တာ တစ္ခုရွိပါေသးတယ္။ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဘယ္လ/ ဘယ္ေန႔ရက္မွာ က်င္းပမွာလဲ။ ဂ်င္ဝဘ္က (၁၀/၁၀/၁၀) တဲ့။ (တစည) ကေတာ့ “ေအာက္- ႏို- ဒီ” တစ္လလမွာ ျဖစ္ႏုိင္တယ္တဲ့။ ခန္႔မွန္းေခ်ပဲ ေျပာႏုိင္ၾကတယ္။ ဘယ္သူမွ ေန႔ရက္အတိအက်မေျပာႏုိင္ပါဘူး။ အမ်ိဳးသားေရးဦးဝင္းႏုိင္ကေတာ့ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ၂၀၁၁ သုိ႔ ေရႊ႕ေျပာင္းဖို႔ေျပာေနတယ္။
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေန႔ရက္အတိအက်ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာႏုိင္ေရးထက္ ပိုလို႔အေရးႀကီးတဲ့ ကိစၥတစ္ခုရွိပါေသးတယ္။ သမၼတအျဖစ္ဘယ္သူ႔ကိုတင္မလဲ။
ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီးကိုယ္တုိင္ ေျဖရမယ့္ေမးခြန္း ျဖစ္ေနပါတယ္။ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီးက သက္တမ္းေစ့႐ုံတင္ မကဘူး၊ အိပ္စပုိင္ယားေတာင္ ျဖစ္ေနပါၿပီ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ကိုင္ထားတဲ့ အာဏာနဲ႔တပ္ကို လက္လႊတ္လိုက္ရင္ ဘာျဖစ္သြားႏိုင္တယ္ဆိုတာ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီး ေကာင္းေကာင္းသိတယ္။ ဒီအသက္ဒီအရြယ္မွာ “အမ်ားဗိုလ္လူပင္စင္ယူ” ေပမယ့္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီး မယူဝံ့ပါဘူး။ ကာကြယ္ေရးဦးစီးခ်ဳပ္ လုပ္ခ်င္သူေတြက ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးႀကီးေနာက္မွာ တန္းစီေနပါတယ္။ တစ္ေယာက္ထဲလည္း မဟုတ္ဘူး။ ဒီကိစၥဟာ စစ္အုပ္စု ထိပ္သီးအာဏာပုိင္အသုိင္းအထဲက အဆံုးအျဖတ္အက်ဆံုး ကိစၥတစ္ခုျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
“နံပတ္ဝမ္း” ဆိုတာ တစ္ေယာက္ထဲဘဲျဖစ္ရမယ္ မဟုတ္လား။ ေရွ႕က နံပတ္ဝမ္းက အုိမင္းလွၿပီ။ ေနာက္မွာ နံပတ္ဝမ္း အေလာင္း အလ်ာေတြ တန္းစီေနၿပီ။ ထင္ျမင္ယူဆခ်က္ေတြကေတာ့ အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးၾကားေနရတာပါပဲ။ ဘယ္သူဘာျဖစ္လာမလဲဆိုတဲ့ ဒီပြဲရဲ႕အဆံုးအျဖတ္ကို ဘယ္သူမွ တိတိက်က်ေျပာႏုိင္မွာ မဟုတ္ဘူး။ အေျဖထြက္လာေတာ့မွသာ ေၾသာ္ ဒီလိုကိုးလို႔ မွတ္ခ်က္ခ်ၾကရမွာပါ။ ဒါကိုေတာ့ ေငြေရာင္ပိတ္ ကားေပၚမွာဆက္လက္ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ဖိုထားခဲ့ၾကပါစုိ႔။
အခုမွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြ လႈပ္ရွားလာေနၾကတယ္။ လႈပ္ရွားလိုက္ေတာ့ အသံေတြထြက္လာတယ္။ ထြက္လာတ့ဲအသံအမ်ားစုက မတရားဘူး၊ မညီမွ်ဘူး၊ မမွ်တဘူးဆိုတဲ့ အသံေတြပဲျဖစ္တယ္။ သူတို႔က အခုမွ စုကာစဖြဲ႔ကာစ ပါတီေတြဆိုေတာ့ ေငြေၾကး၊ စည္း႐ံုး ဖြဲ႔စည္းေရး၊ သြားေရးလာေရးစတဲ့ ဘက္ေပါင္းစံုမွာ အခက္အခဲေတြ ရွိေနတယ္။ အမ်ားစုက အမတ္ေလာင္း (၁၀၀) ဝင္ေရြးႏုိင္မယ့္ အေျခအေန မရွိၾကဘူး။
သူတုိ႔ ပထမဆံုးႀကံဳရတာ ရက္ေပါင္း (၉၀) အတြင္း လူ (၁၀၀၀) သုိ႔မဟုတ္ (၅၀၀) ျပည့္မီေအာင္ စုေဆာင္းၾကဖို႔ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီလိုစုေဆာင္းေရးခရီးစဥ္မွာပဲ (စရဖ)ေထာက္လွမ္းေရး၊ (SB) ေထာက္လွမ္းေရးေတြက မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြ သြားေလရာမွာ လူလံုးျပေနၾကလုိ႔ မထိပ္သာမလန္႔သာျဖစ္ရတာေတြ၊ ရပ္ရြာျပည္သူမ်ားက စိုးရြံ႕ထိပ္လန္႔မႈေတြ ျဖစ္ရတာေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ေဝဖန္ေျပာဆိုေနတာ ၾကားေနရပါတယ္။
မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြကတခ်ဳိ႕က “ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ပါတီ” ကို ၿပိဳင္ဘက္လုိ႔ သေဘာထားေၾကာင္း ေျပာသံလည္း ၾကားလိုက္ရပါတယ္။ ဒီလိုေျပာဆိုေနၾကတာေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ပါတီဘက္က ျပန္ေျပာသံ မၾကားရေသးပါဘူး။ မတူလို႔/ မမႈေလာက္လို႔ ျပန္မေျပာတာ လားေတာ့ မသိပါဘူး။ စစ္အုပ္စု အေမတူအေဖကြဲ (တစည) အကိုႀကီးက ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ညီေလးကို ၿပိဳင္ဘက္လို သေဘာထားတယ္ လို႔ေျပာသံလည္း ၾကားရပါတယ္။ ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ညီေလး ပါတီဖြဲ႔တာက (မဆလ) ကေန (တစည) အျဖစ္ ဘဝေျပာင္းတာထက္ ပိုၿပီးေျဗာင္က်တယ္။ ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ညီေလးက မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီအားလံုးထက္ ေခါင္းေရာ၊ ေျခေရာ၊ လက္ေရာ ကဲတဲ့သာတဲ့ အရွင္ေမြးေန႔ခ်င္းႀကီး လူလြန္မသား ညီေလးျဖစ္တယ္။ စစ္အုပ္စုရဲ႕အေမြခံေျချပဳပါတီျဖစ္တယ္။ ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ပါတီအတြက္ လူ(၁၀၀၀) ရဖို႔ဆိုတာ ငွက္ေပ်ာသီးအခြံႏႊာရတာကမွ ခက္ေနပါလိမ့္ဦးမယ္။
ႀကံ့ဖြ႔ံက သူ႔အဖြဲ႔ဝင္အင္အား ၂၄ သန္း ေက်ာ္ရွိတယ္လို႔ ထုတ္ေျပာဖူးတယ္။ ဒီပမာဏက တုိင္းျပည္လူဦးေရစုစုေပါင္း (၅၄ သန္းေက်ာ္)ရဲ႕ ၄၄ ရာခုိင္ႏႈန္းေက်ာ္ရွိပါတယ္။ ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ေတြဟာ ေတာင္သူလယ္သမားေတြထဲမွာ ၃၅ ဒသမ ၆၆ ရာခုိင္ႏႈန္း၊ ေက်ာင္းသားလူငယ္ထဲမွာ ၂၉ ဒသမ ၃၂ ရာခုိင္ႏႈန္း၊ အလုပ္သမားထဲမွာ ၂၅ ဒသမ ၁၂ ရာခုိင္ႏႈန္း အသီးသီးရွိတယ္လို႔ ၂၀၀၇ ခုႏွစ္၊ မတ္လ ၂၆ ရက္ေန႔က ေနျပည္ေတာ္မွာ ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔က လုပ္တဲ့သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပြဲမွာ ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ဌာနခ်ဳပ္တာဝန္ရွိသူ ေဒၚသိန္းသိန္းေက်ာ္က ထုတ္ေဖာ္ေျပာခဲ့ဖူးတယ္။ ဒီစာရင္းက လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ ၃ ႏွစ္ ေက်ာ္က စာရင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ စစ္တပ္နဲ႔ ဝန္ထမ္းေတြထဲက ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔အင္အားေတြ မပါေသးဘူး။ အေဆာက္အဦး၊ ေငြေၾကး၊ စည္း႐ံုးဖြဲ႔စည္းမႈစတာေတြ မပါေသးဘူး။
ဒီေလာက္အထိ ကိုးကားျပရတာက ဒီကေန႔ မွတ္ပံုတင္ၾကတဲ့ပါတီေတြနဲ႔ (နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စုတုိက္႐ုိက္အေျချပဳ အေမြခံႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ပါတီ အေနအထားဟာ မိုးနဲ႔ေျမလို ကြာလွတယ္ဆိုတာ ထင္ရွားေစခ်င္လို႔ပါ။ ၿပီးေတာ့ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဆိုတာကလည္း စစ္အုပ္စု စိတ္တုိင္းက် ေရးဆြဲအတည္ျပဳထားတဲ့ ၂၀၀၈ အေျခခံဥပေဒစည္းဝိုင္းထဲမွာ ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္ကစားၾကရမွာ မဟုတ္လား။ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေကာ္မရွင္နဲ႔ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဆိုင္ရာ ဥပေဒေတြဆိုတာေတြကလည္း (နအဖ) စိတ္ႀကိဳက္ဖြဲ႔စည္းျပဌာန္းေပးထားတာေတြပဲ မဟုတ္ပါလား။ ဒီလိုမတရားတဲ့ တစ္ဘက္သတ္က်လြန္းလွတဲ့ အေျခအေန အခ်က္အလက္ ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္မွာ မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြအႏုိင္ရဖို႔ဆိုတာ ေဝးလြန္းလွပါတယ္။ မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီတစ္ခုက ေျပာေနသလို “လူထုတိုက္ပြဲပံုစံနဲဲ႔ ျဖတ္သန္းရမယ္” ဆိုတာေလာက္နဲ႔ မျဖစ္ႏုိင္ဘူးလို႔ ေျပာခ်င္တာပါ။
ဒါ့အျပင္မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြရဲ႕ “သက္ေန” နဲ႔ ကံၾကမၼာဟာ ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီမ်ား မွတ္ပံုတင္ျခင္းဥပေဒနဲ႔ သိန္းစိုးေကာ္မရွင္ရဲ႕ လက္ဝယ္မွာရွိေနတဲ့ အခ်က္ပါဘဲ။
မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြရဲ႕ “ျဖစ္- တည္- ပ်က္” ကို သိန္းစုိးေကာ္မရွင္က ျပဳျပင္စီရင္ဖန္တီးမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေကာ္မရွင္က “ျဖစ္” ဆိုရင္ “ျဖစ္” ရမယ္။ “တည္” ဆိုရင္ “တည္” ရမယ္။ “ပ်က္” ဆိုရင္ “ပ်က္” ရလိမ့္မယ္။ ဘယ္သူေတြက ျငင္းပယ္လြန္ဆန္ဝံ့မွာလဲ။ “ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေကာ္မရွင္၏ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ႏွင့္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ခ်က္မ်ားသည္ အၿပီးအျပတ္ျဖစ္ရမည္” (Final & Conclusive) အာဏာကုန္ ေပးအပ္ထားၿပီး ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေတာ္တန္တိတ္။ ဘယ္သူအတန္႔တက္ဝံ့သလဲ။
ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ပါတီ လက္ရွိအေနအထားနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ၿပီး မရွင္းလင္းတာေတြ တရားမွ်တမႈမရွိတဲ့၊ တစ္ဖက္သတ္က်တဲ့ အေနအထားေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြက ေၾကညာခ်က္ေတြ ထုတ္ျပန္တာ၊ မီဒီယာေတြမွာ ေျပာဆိုတာေတြၾကားေနရေပမယ့္ သိန္းစိုးေကာ္မရွင္က ဘာမွ် အေရးယူေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးတာမရွိပါဘူး။
၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဟာ မစခင္ကပဲ မညီမွ်မႈေတြ၊ မတရားမႈေတြ၊ အႏုိင္ထက္က်င့္မႈေတြနဲ႔ျပည့္ႏွက္ေနတယ္ဆိုတာ ထင္ျမင္ယူဆခ်က္သက္သက္၊ သံသယသက္သက္မွ် မဟုတ္ေတာ့ပါဘူး။ မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြရဲ႕ မ်က္ျမင္ကိုယ္ေတြ႔ျဖစ္ေနပါၿပီ။
မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီေတြေတာင္းဆိုေနတဲ့ လြတ္လပ္ၿပီးတရားမွ်တတဲ့ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဆိုတာ ေလထဲမွာပဲ လြင့္ပ်ယ္သြားပါလိမ့္မယ္။
လြတ္လပ္ၿပီးတရားမွ်တဲ့ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲျဖစ္ဖို႔ဆိုရင္ အနိမ့္ဆံုးအားျဖင့္ ၂၀၀၈ အေျခခံဥပေဒ ျပန္လည္သံုးသပ္ ျပင္ဆင္ေရး၊ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဆိုင္ရာ ဥပေဒ ၅ ရပ္ ျပင္ဆင္ေရး၊ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ေကာ္မရွင္ကို သမာသမတ္ရွိသူမ်ားျဖင့္ ျပန္လည္ျပင္ဆင္ဖြဲ႔စည္းေရး၊ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၊ ခြန္ထြန္းဦး၊ စုိင္းညြန္႔လြင္၊ မင္းကိုႏုိင္၊ ကိုကိုႀကီးအပါအဝင္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမ်ား အားလံုးလႊတ္ေပးေရးဆိုတဲ့ အဆင့္က စတင္ရပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ဒီလိုအေျခခံေတြ အခ်က္အလက္ေတြ မရွိဘဲ။ လြတ္လပ္ၿပီး တရားမွ်တဲ့ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ေမွ်ာ္လင့္လို႔ မျဖစ္ႏုိင္ပါဘူး။ ေငြကုန္လူပမ္းၿပီး ျပည္သူမ်က္မုန္းက်ိဳးတာပဲ အဖတ္တင္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။
ဒါေၾကာင့္ (နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စု စပြန္္ဆာအတုိင္းသာ တစ္သေဝမတိမ္း ဆက္သြားၾကမယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ ႀကံ့ဖြံ႔ပါတီပဲ အႏုိင္ရပါလိမ့္မယ္။ လႊတ္ေတာ္ဆိုတာလည္း အရပ္ဝတ္လဲထားတဲ့ စစ္သားနဲ႔ ယူနီေဖာင္းဝတ္ထားတဲ့စစ္သားေတြရဲ႕ စကားေျပာဆိုင္ပဲ ျဖစ္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ေနရာအခ်ိဳ႕မွာ အေရြးခ်ယ္ခံရမယ့္ မွတ္ပံုတင္ပါတီမ်ားက လႊတ္ေတာ္အမတ္မ်ားအဖို႔ကေတာ့ နတ္ကရာ ၾကည့္ေမာေနရမယ့္ကိန္းပဲ ဆိုက္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။
(နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စု စပြန္ဆာေအာက္မွာ ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးေတာ့လုပ္ၾကရပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ဒီလိုလုပ္တဲ့ေနရမွာ စစ္အုပ္စု စိတ္တိုင္းက်ဆြဲေပးထားတဲ့ စည္းဝိုင္းထဲက ႏုိင္ငံေရးသာလုပ္ေနမယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ ဘာမွျဖစ္လာႏုိင္မွာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ အဲဒီစည္းဝိုင္းထဲမွာ တဝဲလည္လည္ပဲ ျဖစ္ေနပါလိမ့္မယ္။ လႊတ္ေတာ္ထဲမွာ အရပ္ဝတ္လဲထားတဲ့စစ္သားနဲ႔ ယူနီေဖာင္းဝတ္ထားတဲ့ စစ္သားအျပန္ အလွန္စကားမ်ားတာကို ထိုင္နားေထာင္ေနရပါလိမ့္မယ္။
ဒါေၾကာင့္ (နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စုစိတ္တုိင္းၾက ေရးဆြဲထားတဲ့ စည္းဝိုင္းကိုေဖာက္ထြက္ရပါလိမ့္မယ္။ (နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စုေရးဆြဲထားတဲ့ စည္းဝိုင္းထဲ ပိုမိုက်ယ္ဝန္းတဲ့၊ လြတ္လပ္မႈနဲ႔ တရားမွ်တမႈပိုမိုရွိၿပီး၊ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအင္အားစု အားလုံးပါဝင္ႏိုင္မယ့္၊ ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္ႏုိင္မယ့္ စည္းဝိုင္းသစ္ကို ေရးဆြဲဖန္တီးရပါလိမ့္မယ္။ အဲဒီလုပ္ငန္းကသာလွ်င္ ယေန႔ကာလအတြက္ အဓိကက်တဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံေရးလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ခ်ဳပ္ေျပာရရင္ ၂၀၀၈ အေျခခံဥပေဒ တိုက္ဖ်က္ေရး ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
တခ်ိန္မွာ တခ်ိဳ႕က ႏုိင္ငံေရးဆိုတာ “မစားေကာင္းတဲ့အသီး” ၊ “ဘဝပ်က္သြားမယ္” ဆိုၿပီး ကိုယ္တစ္ေယာက္ထဲ ေၾကာက္အား ပုိ႐ံုတင္မကဘူး၊ အျခားတက္ႂကြလႈပ္ရွားလိုသူေတြကိုပါ တဖက္လွည့္နဲ႔ တားျမစ္ေခ်ာက္လွန္႔တတ္ၾကပါေသးတယ္။ (နအဖ) စစ္အုပ္စု စပြန္ဆာလုပ္ေပးတဲ့ စည္းဝိုင္းထဲကႏုိင္ငံေရးပဲ လုပ္ေနမယ္ဆိုရင္ အႏၱရာယ္ခပ္သိမ္းကင္းၿငိမ္းႏုိင္မယ္လို႔ ဘယ္သူေျပာဝံ့သလဲ။
ႏုိင္ငံေရးလုပ္တယ္ဆိုတာ ေခ်ာင္းသာကမ္းေျခ သဲေသာင္ေျမေပၚမွာ အပန္းေျဖလမ္းေလွ်ာက္တာမွ မဟုတ္တာ။
(တူေမာင္ညိဳ)
၂၀၁၀ ဇြန္
Essay: Representation as a living political idea
“In the grand discovery of modern times, the system of representation, the solution of all the difficulties, both speculative and practical, will perhaps be found. If it cannot, we seem to be forced upon the extraordinary conclusion, that good Government is impossible.” (1)
(Utilitarian Philosopher James Mill)
In his 'Essay On Government', the Utilitarian philosopher James Mill, salutes representation as 'the grand discovery of modern times'. Andrew Heywood (2) states that representative democracy is a ‘limited and indirect form of democracy that is based on the selection of those who will rule on behalf of the people’. The defining characteristics of limited and indirect clearly shows the nature of representative democracy that recognizes the impossibility of all citizens being involved in every decision making process, and the necessity of the election of representatives of the people to government. Thus, representation can be seen as a necessity of modern politics.
If so, how is it possible to prevent the representatives from themselves following their interest at the expense of the interests of the community? Do considerations of scale, expertise and knowledge of political matters make representation inevitable in any large-scale political community and does this then open up the danger of a gap between representatives and represented? Would representative democracy give way to oligarchy and elitism? Can a representative system realize freedom as it promises? In fact, representation is one of the most problematic concepts in the interpretations of democratic theory. This raises the question of whether the concept of representation is a living political idea.On Representation
In his book of 'The Prince', the Italian political philosopher, Machiavelli argues in favour of a strong leader to govern a nation according to his own decisions and observations by using the example of a disease in society stating as
"(…) by recognising from afar the diseases that are spreading in the state (which is a gift given only to a prudent ruler), they can be cured quickly; but when they are not recognized and are left to grow to the extent that everyone recognizes them, there is no longer any cure." (3)
For Machiavelli, 'necessity' is the most concept for him and he uses it to determine military might in foreign policy as well as strong leaders in governments. In his book of the Discourses, Machiavelli states the twofold role virtuous individuals play in political culture. The first function of virtuous men is to inspire and beget virtue in others, and citizen virtue as well as military virtue is vital in protecting the republic from internal as well as external dangers, thus individual leadership is necessary in some particular affairs. The second function of virtuous men is to prevent corruption. All peoples tend to become corrupt in time due to the gradual loss of fear and respect for the law, thus a founding father figure is needed to perform “excessive and notable” executions to refresh people’s memories. (4)
Similarly, in his writings of The Utility of the union as a safeguard against domestic faction and insurrection, American Philosopher, James Madison argues in favour of the role of leaders. He states that public views could be refined and enlarged through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. (5) He also believes that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves. For Madison, the representative government could overcome the excesses of pure democracy because elected few are likely to be competent and have a capability for the interests of the people and the government ought to be led by the best men.
To the contrary, in his book of 'The Social Contract and Discourses', Jean-Jacques Rousseau argues that representation and sovereignty are mutually incompatible because sovereignty cannot be delegated and represented. In his view, sovereignty lies essentially in the general will, and will does not admit of representation, then the deputies of the people are not and cannot be its representatives (6). On his line of thought, the election of representatives puts an end to the liberty of the people.
Alternatively, the eighteenth-century philosopher and politician Edmund Burke rejects the idea of representative as a delegate, that constrained to keep strictly to the views of those whom they represent and advocates the opposite idea of the role of the parliamentary representative. In his classical speech to the electors of Bristol, Burke strongly opposed the idea that representatives are bound by instructions or a mandate from their constituents. In his view, authoritative instructions, which the Member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though the contrary to to the clearest conviction of his judgement and conscience; are things unknown to the laws of the land and which arise from a fundamental Mistake of the whole order and tenour of the Constitution.(7) Therefore, he advocates that parliamentary representatives must decide on issues in accordance with their own judgements, after hearing the debates in the representative arena.
For James Mill, representation was the grand discovery of modern times and a necessity of modern politics. However, he observes the problems that could give rise from the idea of representation and the possible conflicts of interests if representatives themselves follow their private interests at the expense of community interests. Mill, thus, highlight the solution that lay in the institution of checks and controls over the representatives that allow them to hold office only for limited periods. In his 'Essay on Government ' (8), he clearly stakes out the principles of accountability of representatives to be represented and the need for institutions to put this principles into practice.
In Considerations on Representative Government (9) , John Stuart Mill also argues in favour of the concept of 'representation' by highlighting the weaknesses of the ancient Greek idea of the polis. According to Mill, there are obvious geographical and physical limits to the place and time of open meeting as well as the problems posed by coordination and regulation in a densely populated country. Therefore, the notion of self-government of government by open meeting and any form of classical or direct democracy could not be sustained in modern society. He then recommends a representative democratic system along with freedom of speech, the press and assembly, that has distinct advantages of providing the mechanism whereby central powers can be watched and controlled as well as establishing a forum (parliament) to act as a watchdog of liberty and centre of reason and debate through electoral competition, leadership qualities with intellect for the maximum benefit at all.
For John Mill, the 'ideally best polity' in modern conditions comprises a representative democratic system in which 'people exercise through deputies periodically elected by themselves the ultimate controlling power (10). He believes that representative democracy could combine accountability with professionalism and expertise and both democracy and skilled governments are the conditions that complement each other. He argues in favour of skilled governments and political leadership. However, in his book of Liberty, he also argues in favour of the use of a utilitarianist doctrine in a democracy in which a political leader’s action is right only insofar as it is useful or directly benefits the majority. (11)
The debates on representation involves not only the above antithesis between direct democracy and indirect democracy, the gaps between representatives and represented, the roles of representatives and the principles of accountability of representatives to be represented; but also the problems of what is to represent and the problems of inclusion and exclusion. In her book of 'The Concept of Representation', the American Philosopher Hannah Pitkin argues that a representative government must not merely be in control, not merely promote public interest, but must also be responsive to the people. (12) On her lines of thought, the people must not be passive objects of manipulation, nor would it be enough for a government to be responsive to public opinion only on occasions when it is possible. Instead, there must be a constant condition of responsiveness, of potential readiness to respond and some forms of institutional arrangements for government responsiveness. She also argues that the notion of representative government seems to incorporate both a very general, abstract, metaphorical idea (13) -that the people of a nation are present in the action of its government in complex ways- and some fairly concrete, practical, and historically traditional institutions intended to secure such an outcome.
However, Pitkin also asserts that there could be some tensions between the practice of representation and the democratic principles of accountability and control that were similarly highlighted by elite theorists like Robert Michels. In his 'iron law of oligarchy', Michels points out that popular sovereignty could never be achieved, and the masses, elevated by democratic theory to the highest role, in reality could only give way to oligarchy. On his lines of thought, social revolution would not affect any real modification of the internal structure of the mass, as the majority of human beings, in a condition of eternal tutelage, are predestined by tragic necessity to submit to the dominion of a small minority, and must be content to constitute the pedestal of an oligarchy (14). These views raise the debates about what it is to represent in terms of the democratic theory.
The contemporary debates on representation also involves the problem of inclusion and exclusion. In his book of In Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, Robert Dahl distinguished political regimes by two axes - the degree of political competition and the degree of political participation. For Dahl, the axis of political competition was rooted from monopolistic regimes in which power is concentrated in the hands of a narrow elite to pluralist regimes in which power is dispersed among groups and institutions while the axis of political participation was referred by the proportion of the population that is entitled to participate in a more or less equal plane (15). The higher the proportion of the population that plays a part in decision making the more inclusion of the regime type and the lower that proportion, the more exclusionary the regime type.
In contrast, Anne Phillips argues that the defining characteristics of representative democracy, as Robert Dahl has clarified, are grounded in the heterogeneity of the societies that gave it birth and it was the diversity of citizenry that made the earlier practices of Athenian democracy so inappropriate to the modern world (16). She, then, suggests the need for a 'politics of presence' which could give voice to a number of groups excluded or oppressed or marginalized by the individualist representation of liberal democracy. In her views, demands for political presence have often arisen out of the politics of social movements, which reflect differences in social class such as the 'representation of labour' and inequalities such as the civil rights movement, women's movements and autonomous organizations that speak for oppressed or disadvantaged groups. By putting the role of social movements on the agenda, she challenged the traditional modes and ideas of representation in liberal democracy that might not be adequate to ensure reflections of different groups, identities and minorities. By drawing on the historical accounts of how the conceptions of 'representation' has developed over time, the idea of 'representation' could be said to be a living political idea. It, then, raised the question of the livingness of 'representation' in politics.
Interpretations of living political ideas on the development of representation
Kenneth Shepsle regards ideas as purely interest-oriented vehicles or instruments used by politicians to further their own ideas . In his view, political actors only recur to ideas to justify things which have been decided on interest grounds long before Institutions and incentives are the really decisive explanatory variables . He makes clear in summarizing his position: “My own view on the force of ideas is to see them as one of the hooks on which politicians hang their objectives and by which they further their interests.” (17) Similarly, Stephen Krasner put forwards ideas as the servants of the interests that play a purely subordinate and instrumental role. In his views, ideas have not made possible alternatives that did not previously exist (18) and they have been one among several instruments that actors have invoked to promote their own, usually mundane, interests.
Alternatively, Tompson, Huysmans and Reokhovnik does not view ideas as purely interest-oriented instruments used by politicians. In their views, ideas are political when they are used to mobilize people behind some sort of political action; when used in political debates, when they have consequences for a wider society; when they are about the nature and limits of politics as well as part of a general vision of how the world should be organized. (19) However, not all ideas are politically alive.
Ideas live in politics only when they inspired and informed different world views that could mobilize people politically. Moreover, they must keep being drawn on, i.e., recycled in political arguments over time, whether being changed, adapted or re-appropriated in Politics. Furthermore, ideas could rarely be dead once institutionalized in political institutions like parliaments and less obvious political institutions like the family, the Church, the law, the prisons and even in medicine and public health matters. However, living political ideas could have significant political implications and possible socio-economic consequences as sometimes people live ideas to their perils or to their limits. Nevertheless, as Raia Proljovnik (20) states, ideas circulate in both political theory and in practice. These different interpretations of the livingness of political ideas might be applied to the development of representation.
Machiavelli's ideas on representation in favour of strong leaders in governments are kept alive because they have been used to justify power politics with a focus on pragmatic evaluation of what will keep politicians in power. Machiavelli has become famous as a sinister and ruthless politician because of the philosophy he expressed in The Prince since then. On the other hand, Machiavelli’s concepts formed the basis of nineteenth-century liberalism, a political philosophy that advocates change for the good of the state and its citizens. His ideas on representation regarding the preference for republican than monarchical governments have a profound influence on the political developments in Europe during the 19th century. His ideas not only circulate in political theory, but also in practice.
Similarly, Madison's ideas on representation are recycled in political debates on representative governments, principles of popular sovereignty, common goods, constitutional matters and so on. His ideas are always implicitly or explicitly played out in political debates and institutional practices. He is taken to stand for the ideas of separations of power and controlling majority's faction effects and the controversies they generate. His ideas were also criticized by anti-federalists and modern philosophers. In his book of 'Explaining America', Garry Wills asserts the role of minorities by criticizing Madison: "Minorities can make use of dispersed and staggered governmental machinery to clog, delay, slow down, hamper, and obstruct the majority. But these weapons for delay are given to the minority irrespective of its factious or non-factious character; and they can be used against the majority irrespective of its factious or non-factious character. What Madison prevents is not faction, but action. What he protects is not the common good but delay as such." (21) Thus, it is obvious that Madison's political ideas are alive as inspirations and have consequences for the society as a whole.
On the other hand, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's remarks on the frictions between the government and the people still represents as living political ideas. The demand that all citizens should participate in popular assemblies is unique to Rousseau in the modern world. His critics on representation are still alive in both political theory and political practice and his alternative concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity have inspired different views that mobilized people politically. In fact, "Liberty, equality, fraternity" was to be the motto of the 'French Revolution', which drew a great deal of inspiration from his ideas. Likewise, James Mill's ideas on representation regarding the principles of accountability and institutional requirements were taken seriously in debates in good governance and being institutionalized in political institutions and international organizations.
In a modern era, John Stuart Mill's ideas on proportional representation, in which “the champions of unpopular doctrines would not put forth their arguments merely in books and periodicals, read only by their own side; instead the opposing ranks would meet face to face to hand with proportional representation, and there would be a fair comparison of their intellectual strength, in the presence of the country” (22) , are still alive and being interpreted, adapted, and re-appropriated in politics. They have been firmly institutionalized into constitutions and governance structures in modern politics as well as being alive in political debates. Some scholars like Burns and Ryan (23) argue that Mill's consistent viewpoints throughout his political writings were not strictly democratic. Others like Robson and Bobbio (24) believe that he was. On their lines of arguments, it is clear that Mill's ideas have been adapted in current debates on electoral reforms, democratic forms of governance as well as contemporary social and political thoughts.
The ideas on representation inspired by Hanna Pitkin have also helped shaping the next generations of empirical research into the practice of American Democracy. Hanna Pitkin made the radical move of de-centering political representation from the intentions and acts of individual subjects and, so, breaking with the assumption that a political representative, like a lawyer, delegate or trustee, stands in a “one-to-one, person-to-person relationship” to a principal. As Lisa Disch points out, her argument have had the paradoxical effect of encouraging empirical and normative researchers to persist in thinking about political representation in the very terms that Pitkin set out to revise: as a one-on-one relationship between a representative and a constituency (25) . Obviously, her ideas live in politics as people rework them to revise the concept of 'political representation' and have consequences that go well beyond the defined responsibilities of the governments.
On the other hand, the ideas examined by Anne Phillips on the problems of representation of the poor such as the integration of the issues of class into a presence of politics, have inspired politicians and political theorists to articulate how this integration of class and a politics of presence is to be done. Her ideas inspired some political theorists to argue for the necessity descriptive representatives to be selected based on their relationship to citizens who have been unjustly excluded and marginalized by democratic politics (26) , whereas, some to emphasize empirical research on the benefits of having descriptive representatives.
Conclusion
Due to the paradoxical nature of conceptions, political ideas contain different and conflicting views as well as multiple and competing dimensions. Not all political ideas are alive. Ideas live in politics only when they inspired and keep being recycled in political arguments over time, whether being changed, adapted or re-appropriated in Politics. Ideas could also rarely be dead once institutionalized in both political institutions and non-political institutions. Moreover, living political ideas could have significant political implications and possible socio-economic consequences as people sometimes live ideas to their perils or to their limits. Furthermore, ideas are alive when they circulate in both political theory and in practice. In terms of these interpretations of living political ideas to the development of the concept of 'representation', representation can be said to be a living political idea indeed.
Khin Ma Ma Myo (2010)
End Notes
(1) Mill, J. (2004) 'Essay on Government' in Blaug, R. & Schwarzmantel, J. (eds.) Democracy: A Reader, Edinburgh,Edinburgh University Press, p. 154, Originally written 1819-1823
(2) Heywood, A. (2002) Politics, 2nd edition, New York, Palgrave Macmillan
(3) Machiavelli, N. (1987[1532]) 'The Prince' in Bondanella, J. & Musa, M. (eds) The Italian Renaissance Reader, New York, Penguin Books
(4) Machiavelli, N.(1983) The Discourses, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
(5) Madison, J. (1987[1788]) 'The utility of the union as a safeguard against domestic faction and insurrection', The Federalist Papers, No. 10, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, p. 126
(6) Rousseau, J. (1968) The Social Contract and Discourses, Everyman's Library, Dent, London, Book III, Chaoter XV, pp. 78, Originally written 1762
. (7) Burke, E. (1996) 'Speech at the Conclusion of the Poll, 3 November 1774', in Elofson, W. and Woods, J. (eds), The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, Vol. III: Party, Parliament and the American War (1774-80), Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp. 68-70
.(8) Mill, J. (1992) 'Essay on Government', in Ball, T. (ed.) Political Writings, sections VI-VII, pp. 21-24, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Originally written in 1819-1823
. (9) Mill, J.S. (1951) 'Considerations on Representative Government' in Acton, H. (ed.) Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, Dent, London, p. 175- 195, Originally written in 1861
. (10) Mill (1951) p. 228
. (11) Mill, J.S. (1982) On Liberty, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
. (12) Pitkin, H. (1967) 'The Concept of Representation', University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, pp. 232
. (13) Pitkin (1967) pp.236
. (14) Michels, R. (1962) 'Political Parties: A sociological study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul, Free Press, London, pp. 356
. (15) Dahl, R. (1971) Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
. (16) Phillips, A. (1995) The Politics of Presence, Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp. 5
. (17) Shepsle, K. (1985) 'Comment on Derthick and Quirk', in Noll, R. (ed.) Regulatory Policy and the Social Science, Berkeley, University of California Press, pp. 235
. (18) Krasner, S. (1993) 'Westphalia and All That', in Goldstein, J. and Koehane, R. (eds.) Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change, Ithaca, Cornell University Press
. (19) Thompson, G.; Huysmans, J. & Rrokhovnik, R. (2008) 'What makes ideas political?', audio transcripts, courses on Living Political Ideas, Open University
. (20) Thompson, G.; Huysmans, J. & Rrokhovnik, R. (2008) 'How do political ideas live?', audio transcripts, courses on Living Political Ideas, Open University
. (21) Wills, G. (1982) Explaining America, New York, Penguin Books, pp. 195
. (22) Mill, J.S. (1951) "Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and Representation of the Majority Only." in Acton, H. (ed.) Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, Dent, London, p. 175- 195, Originally written in 1861
. (23) Burns, J. (1968) “J.S. Mill and Democracy, 1829-61” in Schneewind (ed) Mill: A collection of Cirtical Essays, pp.328, Ryan (2007) 'Bureaucracy, Democracy, Liberty: Some Unanswered Questions in Mill's Politics', in Urbinati and Zakaris (eds.) J.S. Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.158
.(24) Robson (1968) The Improvement of Mankind: The Social and Political Thought of John Stuart Mill, London, Routledge, pp. 224, Bobbio, N. (2005) Liberalism and Democracy, London, Verso, pp.57
. (25) Disch, L. (2007) 'Representation “Do’s and Don’ts”: Hanna Pitkin’s The Concept of Representation', Online, http://www.univ-paris8.fr/scpo/lisadisch.pdf (assessed on 8/6/2010)
. (26) Dovi, Suzanne. 2002. “Preferable Descriptive Representatives: Or Will Just Any Woman, Black, or Latino Do?” American Political Science Review 96: 745-754.
Bibliography
Burns, J. (1968) “J.S. Mill and Democracy, 1829-61” in Schneewind (ed) Mill: A collection of Cirtical Essays, pp.328
Burke, E. (1996) 'Speech at the Conclusion of the Poll, 3 November 1774', in Elofson, W. and Woods, J. (eds), The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, Vol. III: Party, Parliament and the American War (1774-80), Clarendon Press, Oxford
Dahl, R. (1971) Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
Dovi, Suzanne( 2002) “Preferable Descriptive Representatives: Or Will Just Any Woman, Black, or Latino Do?” American Political Science Review 96: 745-754.
Disch, L. (2007) 'Representation “Do’s and Don’ts”: Hanna Pitkin’s The Concept of Representation', Online, http://www.univ-paris8.fr/scpo/lisadisch.pdf (assessed on 8/6/2010)
Heywood, A. (2002) Politics, 2nd edition, New York, Palgrave Macmillan
Krasner, S. (1993) 'Westphalia and All That', in Goldstein, J. and Koehane, R. (eds.) Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change, Ithaca, Cornell University Press
Machiavelli, N. (1987[1532]) 'The Prince' in Bondanella, J. & Musa, M. (eds) The Italian Renaissance Reader, New York, Penguin Books
Machiavelli, N.(1983) The Discourses, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
Madison, J. (1987[1788]) 'The utility of the union as a safeguard against domestic faction and insurrection', The Federalist Papers, No. 10, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
Michels, R. (1962) 'Political Parties: A sociological study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul, Free Press, London
Mill, J. (1992) 'Essay on Government', in Ball, T. (ed.) Political Writings, sections VI-VII, pp. 21-24, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Originally written in 1819-1823
Mill, J. (2004) 'Essay on Government' in Blaug, R. & Schwarzmantel, J. (eds.) Democracy: A Reader, Edinburgh,Edinburgh University Press, p. 154, Originally written 1819-1823
Mill, J.S. (1951) 'Considerations on Representative Government' in Acton, H. (ed.) Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, Dent, London, p. 175- 195, Originally written in 1861
Mill, J.S. (1982) On Liberty, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
Pitkin, H. (1967) 'The Concept of Representation', University of California Press, Berkeley, CA
Phillips, A. (1995) The Politics of Presence, Clarendon Press, Oxford
Rousseau, J. (1968) The Social Contract and Discourses, Everyman's Library, Dent, London, Book III, Chaoter XV, pp. 78, Originally written 1762
Ryan (2007) 'Bureaucracy, Democracy, Liberty: Some Unanswered Questions in Mill's Politics', in Urbinati and Zakaris (eds.) J.S. Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Shepsle, K. (1985) 'Comment on Derthick and Quirk', in Noll, R. (ed.) Regulatory Policy and the Social Science, Berkeley, University of California Press
Thompson, G.; Huysmans, J. & Rrokhovnik, R. (2008) 'What makes ideas political?', audio transcripts, courses on Living Political Ideas, Open University
Thompson, G.; Huysmans, J. & Rrokhovnik, R. (2008) 'How do political ideas live?', audio transcripts, courses on Living Political Ideas, Open University
Wills, G. (1982) Explaining America, New York, Penguin Books
(Utilitarian Philosopher James Mill)
In his 'Essay On Government', the Utilitarian philosopher James Mill, salutes representation as 'the grand discovery of modern times'. Andrew Heywood (2) states that representative democracy is a ‘limited and indirect form of democracy that is based on the selection of those who will rule on behalf of the people’. The defining characteristics of limited and indirect clearly shows the nature of representative democracy that recognizes the impossibility of all citizens being involved in every decision making process, and the necessity of the election of representatives of the people to government. Thus, representation can be seen as a necessity of modern politics.
If so, how is it possible to prevent the representatives from themselves following their interest at the expense of the interests of the community? Do considerations of scale, expertise and knowledge of political matters make representation inevitable in any large-scale political community and does this then open up the danger of a gap between representatives and represented? Would representative democracy give way to oligarchy and elitism? Can a representative system realize freedom as it promises? In fact, representation is one of the most problematic concepts in the interpretations of democratic theory. This raises the question of whether the concept of representation is a living political idea.On Representation
In his book of 'The Prince', the Italian political philosopher, Machiavelli argues in favour of a strong leader to govern a nation according to his own decisions and observations by using the example of a disease in society stating as
"(…) by recognising from afar the diseases that are spreading in the state (which is a gift given only to a prudent ruler), they can be cured quickly; but when they are not recognized and are left to grow to the extent that everyone recognizes them, there is no longer any cure." (3)
For Machiavelli, 'necessity' is the most concept for him and he uses it to determine military might in foreign policy as well as strong leaders in governments. In his book of the Discourses, Machiavelli states the twofold role virtuous individuals play in political culture. The first function of virtuous men is to inspire and beget virtue in others, and citizen virtue as well as military virtue is vital in protecting the republic from internal as well as external dangers, thus individual leadership is necessary in some particular affairs. The second function of virtuous men is to prevent corruption. All peoples tend to become corrupt in time due to the gradual loss of fear and respect for the law, thus a founding father figure is needed to perform “excessive and notable” executions to refresh people’s memories. (4)
Similarly, in his writings of The Utility of the union as a safeguard against domestic faction and insurrection, American Philosopher, James Madison argues in favour of the role of leaders. He states that public views could be refined and enlarged through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. (5) He also believes that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves. For Madison, the representative government could overcome the excesses of pure democracy because elected few are likely to be competent and have a capability for the interests of the people and the government ought to be led by the best men.
To the contrary, in his book of 'The Social Contract and Discourses', Jean-Jacques Rousseau argues that representation and sovereignty are mutually incompatible because sovereignty cannot be delegated and represented. In his view, sovereignty lies essentially in the general will, and will does not admit of representation, then the deputies of the people are not and cannot be its representatives (6). On his line of thought, the election of representatives puts an end to the liberty of the people.
Alternatively, the eighteenth-century philosopher and politician Edmund Burke rejects the idea of representative as a delegate, that constrained to keep strictly to the views of those whom they represent and advocates the opposite idea of the role of the parliamentary representative. In his classical speech to the electors of Bristol, Burke strongly opposed the idea that representatives are bound by instructions or a mandate from their constituents. In his view, authoritative instructions, which the Member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though the contrary to to the clearest conviction of his judgement and conscience; are things unknown to the laws of the land and which arise from a fundamental Mistake of the whole order and tenour of the Constitution.(7) Therefore, he advocates that parliamentary representatives must decide on issues in accordance with their own judgements, after hearing the debates in the representative arena.
For James Mill, representation was the grand discovery of modern times and a necessity of modern politics. However, he observes the problems that could give rise from the idea of representation and the possible conflicts of interests if representatives themselves follow their private interests at the expense of community interests. Mill, thus, highlight the solution that lay in the institution of checks and controls over the representatives that allow them to hold office only for limited periods. In his 'Essay on Government ' (8), he clearly stakes out the principles of accountability of representatives to be represented and the need for institutions to put this principles into practice.
In Considerations on Representative Government (9) , John Stuart Mill also argues in favour of the concept of 'representation' by highlighting the weaknesses of the ancient Greek idea of the polis. According to Mill, there are obvious geographical and physical limits to the place and time of open meeting as well as the problems posed by coordination and regulation in a densely populated country. Therefore, the notion of self-government of government by open meeting and any form of classical or direct democracy could not be sustained in modern society. He then recommends a representative democratic system along with freedom of speech, the press and assembly, that has distinct advantages of providing the mechanism whereby central powers can be watched and controlled as well as establishing a forum (parliament) to act as a watchdog of liberty and centre of reason and debate through electoral competition, leadership qualities with intellect for the maximum benefit at all.
For John Mill, the 'ideally best polity' in modern conditions comprises a representative democratic system in which 'people exercise through deputies periodically elected by themselves the ultimate controlling power (10). He believes that representative democracy could combine accountability with professionalism and expertise and both democracy and skilled governments are the conditions that complement each other. He argues in favour of skilled governments and political leadership. However, in his book of Liberty, he also argues in favour of the use of a utilitarianist doctrine in a democracy in which a political leader’s action is right only insofar as it is useful or directly benefits the majority. (11)
The debates on representation involves not only the above antithesis between direct democracy and indirect democracy, the gaps between representatives and represented, the roles of representatives and the principles of accountability of representatives to be represented; but also the problems of what is to represent and the problems of inclusion and exclusion. In her book of 'The Concept of Representation', the American Philosopher Hannah Pitkin argues that a representative government must not merely be in control, not merely promote public interest, but must also be responsive to the people. (12) On her lines of thought, the people must not be passive objects of manipulation, nor would it be enough for a government to be responsive to public opinion only on occasions when it is possible. Instead, there must be a constant condition of responsiveness, of potential readiness to respond and some forms of institutional arrangements for government responsiveness. She also argues that the notion of representative government seems to incorporate both a very general, abstract, metaphorical idea (13) -that the people of a nation are present in the action of its government in complex ways- and some fairly concrete, practical, and historically traditional institutions intended to secure such an outcome.
However, Pitkin also asserts that there could be some tensions between the practice of representation and the democratic principles of accountability and control that were similarly highlighted by elite theorists like Robert Michels. In his 'iron law of oligarchy', Michels points out that popular sovereignty could never be achieved, and the masses, elevated by democratic theory to the highest role, in reality could only give way to oligarchy. On his lines of thought, social revolution would not affect any real modification of the internal structure of the mass, as the majority of human beings, in a condition of eternal tutelage, are predestined by tragic necessity to submit to the dominion of a small minority, and must be content to constitute the pedestal of an oligarchy (14). These views raise the debates about what it is to represent in terms of the democratic theory.
The contemporary debates on representation also involves the problem of inclusion and exclusion. In his book of In Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, Robert Dahl distinguished political regimes by two axes - the degree of political competition and the degree of political participation. For Dahl, the axis of political competition was rooted from monopolistic regimes in which power is concentrated in the hands of a narrow elite to pluralist regimes in which power is dispersed among groups and institutions while the axis of political participation was referred by the proportion of the population that is entitled to participate in a more or less equal plane (15). The higher the proportion of the population that plays a part in decision making the more inclusion of the regime type and the lower that proportion, the more exclusionary the regime type.
In contrast, Anne Phillips argues that the defining characteristics of representative democracy, as Robert Dahl has clarified, are grounded in the heterogeneity of the societies that gave it birth and it was the diversity of citizenry that made the earlier practices of Athenian democracy so inappropriate to the modern world (16). She, then, suggests the need for a 'politics of presence' which could give voice to a number of groups excluded or oppressed or marginalized by the individualist representation of liberal democracy. In her views, demands for political presence have often arisen out of the politics of social movements, which reflect differences in social class such as the 'representation of labour' and inequalities such as the civil rights movement, women's movements and autonomous organizations that speak for oppressed or disadvantaged groups. By putting the role of social movements on the agenda, she challenged the traditional modes and ideas of representation in liberal democracy that might not be adequate to ensure reflections of different groups, identities and minorities. By drawing on the historical accounts of how the conceptions of 'representation' has developed over time, the idea of 'representation' could be said to be a living political idea. It, then, raised the question of the livingness of 'representation' in politics.
Interpretations of living political ideas on the development of representation
Kenneth Shepsle regards ideas as purely interest-oriented vehicles or instruments used by politicians to further their own ideas . In his view, political actors only recur to ideas to justify things which have been decided on interest grounds long before Institutions and incentives are the really decisive explanatory variables . He makes clear in summarizing his position: “My own view on the force of ideas is to see them as one of the hooks on which politicians hang their objectives and by which they further their interests.” (17) Similarly, Stephen Krasner put forwards ideas as the servants of the interests that play a purely subordinate and instrumental role. In his views, ideas have not made possible alternatives that did not previously exist (18) and they have been one among several instruments that actors have invoked to promote their own, usually mundane, interests.
Alternatively, Tompson, Huysmans and Reokhovnik does not view ideas as purely interest-oriented instruments used by politicians. In their views, ideas are political when they are used to mobilize people behind some sort of political action; when used in political debates, when they have consequences for a wider society; when they are about the nature and limits of politics as well as part of a general vision of how the world should be organized. (19) However, not all ideas are politically alive.
Ideas live in politics only when they inspired and informed different world views that could mobilize people politically. Moreover, they must keep being drawn on, i.e., recycled in political arguments over time, whether being changed, adapted or re-appropriated in Politics. Furthermore, ideas could rarely be dead once institutionalized in political institutions like parliaments and less obvious political institutions like the family, the Church, the law, the prisons and even in medicine and public health matters. However, living political ideas could have significant political implications and possible socio-economic consequences as sometimes people live ideas to their perils or to their limits. Nevertheless, as Raia Proljovnik (20) states, ideas circulate in both political theory and in practice. These different interpretations of the livingness of political ideas might be applied to the development of representation.
Machiavelli's ideas on representation in favour of strong leaders in governments are kept alive because they have been used to justify power politics with a focus on pragmatic evaluation of what will keep politicians in power. Machiavelli has become famous as a sinister and ruthless politician because of the philosophy he expressed in The Prince since then. On the other hand, Machiavelli’s concepts formed the basis of nineteenth-century liberalism, a political philosophy that advocates change for the good of the state and its citizens. His ideas on representation regarding the preference for republican than monarchical governments have a profound influence on the political developments in Europe during the 19th century. His ideas not only circulate in political theory, but also in practice.
Similarly, Madison's ideas on representation are recycled in political debates on representative governments, principles of popular sovereignty, common goods, constitutional matters and so on. His ideas are always implicitly or explicitly played out in political debates and institutional practices. He is taken to stand for the ideas of separations of power and controlling majority's faction effects and the controversies they generate. His ideas were also criticized by anti-federalists and modern philosophers. In his book of 'Explaining America', Garry Wills asserts the role of minorities by criticizing Madison: "Minorities can make use of dispersed and staggered governmental machinery to clog, delay, slow down, hamper, and obstruct the majority. But these weapons for delay are given to the minority irrespective of its factious or non-factious character; and they can be used against the majority irrespective of its factious or non-factious character. What Madison prevents is not faction, but action. What he protects is not the common good but delay as such." (21) Thus, it is obvious that Madison's political ideas are alive as inspirations and have consequences for the society as a whole.
On the other hand, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's remarks on the frictions between the government and the people still represents as living political ideas. The demand that all citizens should participate in popular assemblies is unique to Rousseau in the modern world. His critics on representation are still alive in both political theory and political practice and his alternative concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity have inspired different views that mobilized people politically. In fact, "Liberty, equality, fraternity" was to be the motto of the 'French Revolution', which drew a great deal of inspiration from his ideas. Likewise, James Mill's ideas on representation regarding the principles of accountability and institutional requirements were taken seriously in debates in good governance and being institutionalized in political institutions and international organizations.
In a modern era, John Stuart Mill's ideas on proportional representation, in which “the champions of unpopular doctrines would not put forth their arguments merely in books and periodicals, read only by their own side; instead the opposing ranks would meet face to face to hand with proportional representation, and there would be a fair comparison of their intellectual strength, in the presence of the country” (22) , are still alive and being interpreted, adapted, and re-appropriated in politics. They have been firmly institutionalized into constitutions and governance structures in modern politics as well as being alive in political debates. Some scholars like Burns and Ryan (23) argue that Mill's consistent viewpoints throughout his political writings were not strictly democratic. Others like Robson and Bobbio (24) believe that he was. On their lines of arguments, it is clear that Mill's ideas have been adapted in current debates on electoral reforms, democratic forms of governance as well as contemporary social and political thoughts.
The ideas on representation inspired by Hanna Pitkin have also helped shaping the next generations of empirical research into the practice of American Democracy. Hanna Pitkin made the radical move of de-centering political representation from the intentions and acts of individual subjects and, so, breaking with the assumption that a political representative, like a lawyer, delegate or trustee, stands in a “one-to-one, person-to-person relationship” to a principal. As Lisa Disch points out, her argument have had the paradoxical effect of encouraging empirical and normative researchers to persist in thinking about political representation in the very terms that Pitkin set out to revise: as a one-on-one relationship between a representative and a constituency (25) . Obviously, her ideas live in politics as people rework them to revise the concept of 'political representation' and have consequences that go well beyond the defined responsibilities of the governments.
On the other hand, the ideas examined by Anne Phillips on the problems of representation of the poor such as the integration of the issues of class into a presence of politics, have inspired politicians and political theorists to articulate how this integration of class and a politics of presence is to be done. Her ideas inspired some political theorists to argue for the necessity descriptive representatives to be selected based on their relationship to citizens who have been unjustly excluded and marginalized by democratic politics (26) , whereas, some to emphasize empirical research on the benefits of having descriptive representatives.
Conclusion
Due to the paradoxical nature of conceptions, political ideas contain different and conflicting views as well as multiple and competing dimensions. Not all political ideas are alive. Ideas live in politics only when they inspired and keep being recycled in political arguments over time, whether being changed, adapted or re-appropriated in Politics. Ideas could also rarely be dead once institutionalized in both political institutions and non-political institutions. Moreover, living political ideas could have significant political implications and possible socio-economic consequences as people sometimes live ideas to their perils or to their limits. Furthermore, ideas are alive when they circulate in both political theory and in practice. In terms of these interpretations of living political ideas to the development of the concept of 'representation', representation can be said to be a living political idea indeed.
Khin Ma Ma Myo (2010)
End Notes
(1) Mill, J. (2004) 'Essay on Government' in Blaug, R. & Schwarzmantel, J. (eds.) Democracy: A Reader, Edinburgh,Edinburgh University Press, p. 154, Originally written 1819-1823
(2) Heywood, A. (2002) Politics, 2nd edition, New York, Palgrave Macmillan
(3) Machiavelli, N. (1987[1532]) 'The Prince' in Bondanella, J. & Musa, M. (eds) The Italian Renaissance Reader, New York, Penguin Books
(4) Machiavelli, N.(1983) The Discourses, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
(5) Madison, J. (1987[1788]) 'The utility of the union as a safeguard against domestic faction and insurrection', The Federalist Papers, No. 10, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, p. 126
(6) Rousseau, J. (1968) The Social Contract and Discourses, Everyman's Library, Dent, London, Book III, Chaoter XV, pp. 78, Originally written 1762
. (7) Burke, E. (1996) 'Speech at the Conclusion of the Poll, 3 November 1774', in Elofson, W. and Woods, J. (eds), The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, Vol. III: Party, Parliament and the American War (1774-80), Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp. 68-70
.(8) Mill, J. (1992) 'Essay on Government', in Ball, T. (ed.) Political Writings, sections VI-VII, pp. 21-24, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Originally written in 1819-1823
. (9) Mill, J.S. (1951) 'Considerations on Representative Government' in Acton, H. (ed.) Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, Dent, London, p. 175- 195, Originally written in 1861
. (10) Mill (1951) p. 228
. (11) Mill, J.S. (1982) On Liberty, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
. (12) Pitkin, H. (1967) 'The Concept of Representation', University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, pp. 232
. (13) Pitkin (1967) pp.236
. (14) Michels, R. (1962) 'Political Parties: A sociological study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul, Free Press, London, pp. 356
. (15) Dahl, R. (1971) Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
. (16) Phillips, A. (1995) The Politics of Presence, Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp. 5
. (17) Shepsle, K. (1985) 'Comment on Derthick and Quirk', in Noll, R. (ed.) Regulatory Policy and the Social Science, Berkeley, University of California Press, pp. 235
. (18) Krasner, S. (1993) 'Westphalia and All That', in Goldstein, J. and Koehane, R. (eds.) Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change, Ithaca, Cornell University Press
. (19) Thompson, G.; Huysmans, J. & Rrokhovnik, R. (2008) 'What makes ideas political?', audio transcripts, courses on Living Political Ideas, Open University
. (20) Thompson, G.; Huysmans, J. & Rrokhovnik, R. (2008) 'How do political ideas live?', audio transcripts, courses on Living Political Ideas, Open University
. (21) Wills, G. (1982) Explaining America, New York, Penguin Books, pp. 195
. (22) Mill, J.S. (1951) "Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and Representation of the Majority Only." in Acton, H. (ed.) Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, Dent, London, p. 175- 195, Originally written in 1861
. (23) Burns, J. (1968) “J.S. Mill and Democracy, 1829-61” in Schneewind (ed) Mill: A collection of Cirtical Essays, pp.328, Ryan (2007) 'Bureaucracy, Democracy, Liberty: Some Unanswered Questions in Mill's Politics', in Urbinati and Zakaris (eds.) J.S. Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.158
.(24) Robson (1968) The Improvement of Mankind: The Social and Political Thought of John Stuart Mill, London, Routledge, pp. 224, Bobbio, N. (2005) Liberalism and Democracy, London, Verso, pp.57
. (25) Disch, L. (2007) 'Representation “Do’s and Don’ts”: Hanna Pitkin’s The Concept of Representation', Online, http://www.univ-paris8.fr/scpo/lisadisch.pdf (assessed on 8/6/2010)
. (26) Dovi, Suzanne. 2002. “Preferable Descriptive Representatives: Or Will Just Any Woman, Black, or Latino Do?” American Political Science Review 96: 745-754.
Bibliography
Burns, J. (1968) “J.S. Mill and Democracy, 1829-61” in Schneewind (ed) Mill: A collection of Cirtical Essays, pp.328
Burke, E. (1996) 'Speech at the Conclusion of the Poll, 3 November 1774', in Elofson, W. and Woods, J. (eds), The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, Vol. III: Party, Parliament and the American War (1774-80), Clarendon Press, Oxford
Dahl, R. (1971) Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
Dovi, Suzanne( 2002) “Preferable Descriptive Representatives: Or Will Just Any Woman, Black, or Latino Do?” American Political Science Review 96: 745-754.
Disch, L. (2007) 'Representation “Do’s and Don’ts”: Hanna Pitkin’s The Concept of Representation', Online, http://www.univ-paris8.fr/scpo/lisadisch.pdf (assessed on 8/6/2010)
Heywood, A. (2002) Politics, 2nd edition, New York, Palgrave Macmillan
Krasner, S. (1993) 'Westphalia and All That', in Goldstein, J. and Koehane, R. (eds.) Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change, Ithaca, Cornell University Press
Machiavelli, N. (1987[1532]) 'The Prince' in Bondanella, J. & Musa, M. (eds) The Italian Renaissance Reader, New York, Penguin Books
Machiavelli, N.(1983) The Discourses, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
Madison, J. (1987[1788]) 'The utility of the union as a safeguard against domestic faction and insurrection', The Federalist Papers, No. 10, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
Michels, R. (1962) 'Political Parties: A sociological study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul, Free Press, London
Mill, J. (1992) 'Essay on Government', in Ball, T. (ed.) Political Writings, sections VI-VII, pp. 21-24, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Originally written in 1819-1823
Mill, J. (2004) 'Essay on Government' in Blaug, R. & Schwarzmantel, J. (eds.) Democracy: A Reader, Edinburgh,Edinburgh University Press, p. 154, Originally written 1819-1823
Mill, J.S. (1951) 'Considerations on Representative Government' in Acton, H. (ed.) Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, Dent, London, p. 175- 195, Originally written in 1861
Mill, J.S. (1982) On Liberty, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
Pitkin, H. (1967) 'The Concept of Representation', University of California Press, Berkeley, CA
Phillips, A. (1995) The Politics of Presence, Clarendon Press, Oxford
Rousseau, J. (1968) The Social Contract and Discourses, Everyman's Library, Dent, London, Book III, Chaoter XV, pp. 78, Originally written 1762
Ryan (2007) 'Bureaucracy, Democracy, Liberty: Some Unanswered Questions in Mill's Politics', in Urbinati and Zakaris (eds.) J.S. Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Shepsle, K. (1985) 'Comment on Derthick and Quirk', in Noll, R. (ed.) Regulatory Policy and the Social Science, Berkeley, University of California Press
Thompson, G.; Huysmans, J. & Rrokhovnik, R. (2008) 'What makes ideas political?', audio transcripts, courses on Living Political Ideas, Open University
Thompson, G.; Huysmans, J. & Rrokhovnik, R. (2008) 'How do political ideas live?', audio transcripts, courses on Living Political Ideas, Open University
Wills, G. (1982) Explaining America, New York, Penguin Books
Freedom from Fear
It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it. Most Burmese are familiar with the four a-gati, the four kinds of corruption. Chanda-gati, corruption induced by desire, is deviation from the right path in pursuit of bribes or for the sake of those one loves. Dosa-gati is taking the wrong path to spite those against whom one bears ill will, and moga-gati is aberration due to ignorance. But perhaps the worst of the four is bhaya-gati, for not only does bhaya, fear, stifle and slowly destroy all sense of right and wrong, it so often lies at the root of the other three kinds of corruption. Just as chanda-gati, when not the result of sheer avarice, can be caused by fear of want or fear of losing the goodwill of those one loves, so fear of being surpassed, humiliated or injured in some way can provide the impetus for ill will. And it would be difficult to dispel ignorance unless there is freedom to pursue the truth unfettered by fear. With so close a relationship between fear and corruption it is little wonder that in any society where fear is rife corruption in all forms becomes deeply entrenched.
Public dissatisfaction with economic hardships has been seen as the chief cause of the movement for democracy in Burma, sparked off by the student demonstrations 1988. It is true that years of incoherent policies, inept official measures, burgeoning inflation and falling real income had turned the country into an economic shambles. But it was more than the difficulties of eking out a barely acceptable standard of living that had eroded the patience of a traditionally good-natured, quiescent people - it was also the humiliation of a way of life disfigured by corruption and fear. The students were protesting not just against the death of their comrades but against the denial of their right to life by a totalitarian regime which deprived the present of meaningfulness and held out no hope for the future. And because the students' protests articulated the frustrations of the people at large, the demonstrations quickly grew into a nationwide movement. Some of its keenest supporters were businessmen who had developed the skills and the contacts necessary not only to survive but to prosper within the system. But their affluence offered them no genuine sense of security or fulfilment, and they could not but see that if they and their fellow citizens, regardless of economic status, were to achieve a worthwhile existence, an accountable administration was at least a necessary if not a sufficient condition. The people of Burma had wearied of a precarious state of passive apprehension where they were 'as water in the cupped hands' of the powers that be.
Emerald cool we may be
As water in cupped hands
But oh that we might be
As splinters of glass
In cupped hands.
Glass splinters, the smallest with its sharp, glinting power to defend itself against hands that try to crush, could be seen as a vivid symbol of the spark of courage that is an essential attribute of those who would free themselves from the grip of oppression. Bogyoke Aung San regarded himself as a revolutionary and searched tirelessly for answers to the problems that beset Burma during her times of trial. He exhorted the people to develop courage: 'Don't just depend on the courage and intrepidity of others. Each and every one of you must make sacrifices to become a hero possessed of courage and intrepidity. Then only shall we all be able to enjoy true freedom.'
The effort necessary to remain uncorrupted in an environment where fear is an integral part of everyday existence is not immediately apparent to those fortunate enough to live in states governed by the rule of law. Just laws do not merely prevent corruption by meting out impartial punishment to offenders. They also help to create a society in which people can fulfil the basic requirements necessary for the preservation of human dignity without recourse to corrupt practices. Where there are no such laws, the burden of upholding the principles of justice and common decency falls on the ordinary people. It is the cumulative effect on their sustained effort and steady endurance which will change a nation where reason and conscience are warped by fear into one where legal rules exist to promote man's desire for harmony and justice while restraining the less desirable destructive traits in his nature.
In an age when immense technological advances have created lethal weapons which could be, and are, used by the powefful and the unprincipled to dominate the weak and the helpless, there is a compelling need for a closer relationship between politics and ethics at both the national and international levels. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations proclaims that 'every individual and every organ of society' should strive to promote the basic rights and freedoms to which all human beings regardless of race, nationality or religion are entitled. But as long as there are governments whose authority is founded on coercion rather than on the mandate of the people, and interest groups which place short-term profits above long-term peace and prosperity, concerted international action to protect and promote human rights will remain at best a partially realized struggle. There willcontinue to be arenas of struggle where victims of oppression have to draw on their own inner resources to defend their inalienable rights as members of the human family.
The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation's development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration. It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences ofdesire, ill will, ignorance and fear.
Saints, it has been said, are the sinners who go on trying. So free men are the oppressed who go on trying and who in the process make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and to uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society. Among the basic freedoms to which men aspire that their lives might be full and uncramped, freedom from fear stands out as both a means and an end. 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.
Always one to practise what he preached, Aung San himself constantly demonstrated courage - not just the physical sort but the kind that enabled him to speak the truth, to stand by his word, to accept criticism, to admit his faults, to correct his mistakes, to respect the opposition, to parley with the enemy and to let people be the judge of his worthiness as a leader. It is for such moral courage that he will always be loved and respected in Burma - not merely as a warrior hero but as the inspiration and conscience of the nation. The words used by Jawaharlal Nehru to describe Mahatma Gandhi could well be applied to Aung San:
'The essence of his teaching was fearlessness and truth, and action allied to these, always keeping the welfare of the masses in view.'
Gandhi, that great apostle of non-violence, and Aung San, the founder of a national army, were very different personalities, but as there is an inevitable sameness about the challenges ofauthoritarian rule anywhere at any time, so there is a similarity in the intrinsic qualities of those who rise up to meet the challenge. Nehru, who considered the instillation of courage in the people of India one of Gandhi's greatest achievements, was a political modernist, but as he assessed the needs for a twentieth-century movement for independence, he found himself looking back to the philosophy of ancient India: 'The greatest gift for an individual or a nation . .. was abhaya, fearlessness, not merely bodily courage but absence of fear from the mind.'
Fearlessness may be a gift but perhaps more precious is the courage acquired through endeavour, courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one's actions, courage that could be described as 'grace under pressure' - grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure.
Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear ofdeath, fear oflosing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.
The wellspring of courage and endurance in the face of unbridled power is generally a firm belief in the sanctity of ethical principles combined with a historical sense that despite all setbacks the condition of man is set on an ultimate course for both spiritual and material advancement. It is his capacity for self-improvement and self-redemption which most distinguishes man from the mere brute. At the root of human responsibility is the concept of peffection, the urge to achieve it, the intelligence to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path if not to the end at least the distance needed to rise above individual limitations and environmental impediments. It is man's vision of a world fit for rational, civilized humanity which leads him to dare and to suffer to build societies free from want and fear. Concepts such as truth, justice and compassion cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
(This was the first released for publication by the editor to commemorate the European Parliament's award to Aung San Suu Kyi of the 1990 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. The award ceremony took place in her absence at Strasbourg on 10 July 1991. In the same week the essay appeared in full or in part in The Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times, the Far East Economic Review, the Bangkok Post, the Times of India and in the German, Norwegian and Icelandic press.)
Public dissatisfaction with economic hardships has been seen as the chief cause of the movement for democracy in Burma, sparked off by the student demonstrations 1988. It is true that years of incoherent policies, inept official measures, burgeoning inflation and falling real income had turned the country into an economic shambles. But it was more than the difficulties of eking out a barely acceptable standard of living that had eroded the patience of a traditionally good-natured, quiescent people - it was also the humiliation of a way of life disfigured by corruption and fear. The students were protesting not just against the death of their comrades but against the denial of their right to life by a totalitarian regime which deprived the present of meaningfulness and held out no hope for the future. And because the students' protests articulated the frustrations of the people at large, the demonstrations quickly grew into a nationwide movement. Some of its keenest supporters were businessmen who had developed the skills and the contacts necessary not only to survive but to prosper within the system. But their affluence offered them no genuine sense of security or fulfilment, and they could not but see that if they and their fellow citizens, regardless of economic status, were to achieve a worthwhile existence, an accountable administration was at least a necessary if not a sufficient condition. The people of Burma had wearied of a precarious state of passive apprehension where they were 'as water in the cupped hands' of the powers that be.
Emerald cool we may be
As water in cupped hands
But oh that we might be
As splinters of glass
In cupped hands.
Glass splinters, the smallest with its sharp, glinting power to defend itself against hands that try to crush, could be seen as a vivid symbol of the spark of courage that is an essential attribute of those who would free themselves from the grip of oppression. Bogyoke Aung San regarded himself as a revolutionary and searched tirelessly for answers to the problems that beset Burma during her times of trial. He exhorted the people to develop courage: 'Don't just depend on the courage and intrepidity of others. Each and every one of you must make sacrifices to become a hero possessed of courage and intrepidity. Then only shall we all be able to enjoy true freedom.'
The effort necessary to remain uncorrupted in an environment where fear is an integral part of everyday existence is not immediately apparent to those fortunate enough to live in states governed by the rule of law. Just laws do not merely prevent corruption by meting out impartial punishment to offenders. They also help to create a society in which people can fulfil the basic requirements necessary for the preservation of human dignity without recourse to corrupt practices. Where there are no such laws, the burden of upholding the principles of justice and common decency falls on the ordinary people. It is the cumulative effect on their sustained effort and steady endurance which will change a nation where reason and conscience are warped by fear into one where legal rules exist to promote man's desire for harmony and justice while restraining the less desirable destructive traits in his nature.
In an age when immense technological advances have created lethal weapons which could be, and are, used by the powefful and the unprincipled to dominate the weak and the helpless, there is a compelling need for a closer relationship between politics and ethics at both the national and international levels. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations proclaims that 'every individual and every organ of society' should strive to promote the basic rights and freedoms to which all human beings regardless of race, nationality or religion are entitled. But as long as there are governments whose authority is founded on coercion rather than on the mandate of the people, and interest groups which place short-term profits above long-term peace and prosperity, concerted international action to protect and promote human rights will remain at best a partially realized struggle. There willcontinue to be arenas of struggle where victims of oppression have to draw on their own inner resources to defend their inalienable rights as members of the human family.
The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation's development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration. It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences ofdesire, ill will, ignorance and fear.
Saints, it has been said, are the sinners who go on trying. So free men are the oppressed who go on trying and who in the process make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and to uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society. Among the basic freedoms to which men aspire that their lives might be full and uncramped, freedom from fear stands out as both a means and an end. 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.
Always one to practise what he preached, Aung San himself constantly demonstrated courage - not just the physical sort but the kind that enabled him to speak the truth, to stand by his word, to accept criticism, to admit his faults, to correct his mistakes, to respect the opposition, to parley with the enemy and to let people be the judge of his worthiness as a leader. It is for such moral courage that he will always be loved and respected in Burma - not merely as a warrior hero but as the inspiration and conscience of the nation. The words used by Jawaharlal Nehru to describe Mahatma Gandhi could well be applied to Aung San:
'The essence of his teaching was fearlessness and truth, and action allied to these, always keeping the welfare of the masses in view.'
Gandhi, that great apostle of non-violence, and Aung San, the founder of a national army, were very different personalities, but as there is an inevitable sameness about the challenges ofauthoritarian rule anywhere at any time, so there is a similarity in the intrinsic qualities of those who rise up to meet the challenge. Nehru, who considered the instillation of courage in the people of India one of Gandhi's greatest achievements, was a political modernist, but as he assessed the needs for a twentieth-century movement for independence, he found himself looking back to the philosophy of ancient India: 'The greatest gift for an individual or a nation . .. was abhaya, fearlessness, not merely bodily courage but absence of fear from the mind.'
Fearlessness may be a gift but perhaps more precious is the courage acquired through endeavour, courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one's actions, courage that could be described as 'grace under pressure' - grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure.
Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear ofdeath, fear oflosing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.
The wellspring of courage and endurance in the face of unbridled power is generally a firm belief in the sanctity of ethical principles combined with a historical sense that despite all setbacks the condition of man is set on an ultimate course for both spiritual and material advancement. It is his capacity for self-improvement and self-redemption which most distinguishes man from the mere brute. At the root of human responsibility is the concept of peffection, the urge to achieve it, the intelligence to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path if not to the end at least the distance needed to rise above individual limitations and environmental impediments. It is man's vision of a world fit for rational, civilized humanity which leads him to dare and to suffer to build societies free from want and fear. Concepts such as truth, justice and compassion cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
(This was the first released for publication by the editor to commemorate the European Parliament's award to Aung San Suu Kyi of the 1990 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. The award ceremony took place in her absence at Strasbourg on 10 July 1991. In the same week the essay appeared in full or in part in The Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times, the Far East Economic Review, the Bangkok Post, the Times of India and in the German, Norwegian and Icelandic press.)
Complete Freedom For Woman In Islam
Several woman sighed how the difficult to be moslem woman alias muslimah. they considered that Islam gave no freedom for woman. See how muslimah wear their clothes or find out how the way they go out for business that should be allowed by their husband. Some people think if they felt out of breath with all rules in Islams that are considered as inequitable. is it all true?
It can be understood if several muslimah has that kind of opinion. that is because in this time Islam is queer even for the its follower. It is intended to be made by Islam enemies so that Islam people hate or at least feel doubtful on Islam. If they can realize all those things, it will be easy for them to destroy Islam.
If we doesnt recognize on something, we will not know about the real of it. So, as an intelligent muslimah, we have to understand the deep inside of it. We have already borned as moslem, so it is an obligation for us to be better than muallaf. Muallaf are usually good in explaining the reason why the entering Islam, and be a moslem. The fact has shown that many woman is decide choose Islam as their ways of live.
…The incessant of gender equivalence has made woman is feel afraid and hesitant towards Islam. Because of that, there is a conclusion that Islam gives no freedom for woman…
Understanding Islam is should be done early. Unfortunately, the destruction of conviction (akidah) is also done at first by such small institution named family. As a result, it is not strange for moslem to feel strange and odd about Islam. The incessant of gender equivalence has made woman is feel afraid and hesitant towards Islam. Because of that, there is a conclusion that Islam gives no freedom for woman. How horrible it is.
When muslimah want to open their hearts, and see the facts or make a reflection about that, it will be so much easy to refuse such kind of opinion . All rules in Islam are congruent to human need. there is no rules of Islam even a little bit one that can bring us to the bad aspect of live. If there are any differences at one or several law, it still for human's good. We have to remember, that the one who make this rule is Allah, the great creator of the world. it is important for Allah to botch and humiliate us.
Intelligent woman certainly will not just keep silent in facing that fact. if Islam is pionted on something unfair, our common sense will come up with a question, is that true?. She will try to look for answers to question as well as she can. Not even just make any accusation based on narrow fact, such as for example a wife that is being tortured. Occasionally, his husband is moslem, but at the conclusion Islam is accused unfair towards the wife and treat the husband in special. This kind of opinion is definitely wrong.
Don't make fact as the basic thing to look for truth. Find the accurate one up to to the source, Al quran and Hadits. Examine carefully the both interpretations that are true and believable, because in this time there are lots of liberal group that interprets the verse in careless.be careful with that.
… Woman has to study any subjects as much as man do. Islam does not distinguish between man or woman in the obligation of learning Islam…
The truth can not come up to someone without its efforts. woman has to study any subjects as much as man do. Islam does not distinguish between man or woman in the obligation of learning Islam. The result is determined by our self. do we as woman feel hopeless and doing nothing to be more intelligence or attempt to get it as well as we can? the answer is all yours.
Wrong opinion about woman in Islam can be aversed by the its follower especially woman or muslimah. When do you are previously belong the group that consider Islam is unfair, with your wide knowledge, you will know that all those thing are definitely wrong. And when you previously do not belong this group, you can continue your idea to your friends and your environment. Is the prophet ever uttered on us that we should tell anyone even just about a verse?
Start from this day, voice and refuse the opinion that Islam's rule is unfair for the woman. We can realize all those things trough proselytizing. We have to do it in words and deeds. keep up your spirit! [riafariana/voa-Islam. com]
It can be understood if several muslimah has that kind of opinion. that is because in this time Islam is queer even for the its follower. It is intended to be made by Islam enemies so that Islam people hate or at least feel doubtful on Islam. If they can realize all those things, it will be easy for them to destroy Islam.
If we doesnt recognize on something, we will not know about the real of it. So, as an intelligent muslimah, we have to understand the deep inside of it. We have already borned as moslem, so it is an obligation for us to be better than muallaf. Muallaf are usually good in explaining the reason why the entering Islam, and be a moslem. The fact has shown that many woman is decide choose Islam as their ways of live.
…The incessant of gender equivalence has made woman is feel afraid and hesitant towards Islam. Because of that, there is a conclusion that Islam gives no freedom for woman…
Understanding Islam is should be done early. Unfortunately, the destruction of conviction (akidah) is also done at first by such small institution named family. As a result, it is not strange for moslem to feel strange and odd about Islam. The incessant of gender equivalence has made woman is feel afraid and hesitant towards Islam. Because of that, there is a conclusion that Islam gives no freedom for woman. How horrible it is.
When muslimah want to open their hearts, and see the facts or make a reflection about that, it will be so much easy to refuse such kind of opinion . All rules in Islam are congruent to human need. there is no rules of Islam even a little bit one that can bring us to the bad aspect of live. If there are any differences at one or several law, it still for human's good. We have to remember, that the one who make this rule is Allah, the great creator of the world. it is important for Allah to botch and humiliate us.
Intelligent woman certainly will not just keep silent in facing that fact. if Islam is pionted on something unfair, our common sense will come up with a question, is that true?. She will try to look for answers to question as well as she can. Not even just make any accusation based on narrow fact, such as for example a wife that is being tortured. Occasionally, his husband is moslem, but at the conclusion Islam is accused unfair towards the wife and treat the husband in special. This kind of opinion is definitely wrong.
Don't make fact as the basic thing to look for truth. Find the accurate one up to to the source, Al quran and Hadits. Examine carefully the both interpretations that are true and believable, because in this time there are lots of liberal group that interprets the verse in careless.be careful with that.
… Woman has to study any subjects as much as man do. Islam does not distinguish between man or woman in the obligation of learning Islam…
The truth can not come up to someone without its efforts. woman has to study any subjects as much as man do. Islam does not distinguish between man or woman in the obligation of learning Islam. The result is determined by our self. do we as woman feel hopeless and doing nothing to be more intelligence or attempt to get it as well as we can? the answer is all yours.
Wrong opinion about woman in Islam can be aversed by the its follower especially woman or muslimah. When do you are previously belong the group that consider Islam is unfair, with your wide knowledge, you will know that all those thing are definitely wrong. And when you previously do not belong this group, you can continue your idea to your friends and your environment. Is the prophet ever uttered on us that we should tell anyone even just about a verse?
Start from this day, voice and refuse the opinion that Islam's rule is unfair for the woman. We can realize all those things trough proselytizing. We have to do it in words and deeds. keep up your spirit! [riafariana/voa-Islam. com]