According to Sai Lake, spokesman and caretaker of the now defunct Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), the party that turned up second place countrywide and first place statewide in the 1990 elections, one of the talking points at the meeting with visiting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this morning will be the role the United State should play in helping Burma to become a federal democracy.
“We want the United State to help us in our struggle to achieve a federal democracy like the United States,” he told SHAN. “Then the people of Burma and its neighbors will live happily ever after.”
The SNLD representative Sai Saw Aung is also expected to speak about still unresolved issues such as the release of political prisoners including its leader Hkun Tun Oo, who is serving a 93 year term in Sittwe, ongoing war in the border areas and growing drug abuse among youth.
The meeting is to take place at Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s home and move later to an art gallery owned by former actor Kyaw Thu.
The initiative by Shans in 1960 for the amendment of the 1947 constitution from a unitary system to a more federal system came to an end two years later when the Burma Army staged a coup det’at and abrogated the constitution. The new constitution, drafted and approved by the ruling military junta in 2008, is also being criticized as “federal in form, unitary in substance.”
“As long as Burma refuses to become federal,” commented the late Shan leader, Chao Tzang Yawnghwe (1939-2004), himself an avowed federalist, “the struggles for secession will continue.”
One of the six objectives of the Shan State Army (SSA) ‘South’, that has entered peace talks with Naypyitaw since 19 November, for instance, is total independence from Burma.
