Democratization in Burma (Myanmar)
CBC video: Burma Flirting with Freedom
Myanmar or Burma in the old maps is a country that is isolated, poor and repressed. It is a military governed country that for the first time in decades held an election on Sunday that leaned towards the democratic side. The elections were for a fraction of seats in the lower house of the government.
This election is worth noting because of the possible outcome, mainly the election into a seat in parliament of well known democratic activist and official opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. She has spent the majority of her time in house arrest. The last time she actively participated in an elections was when her party the National League for Democracy party won a landslide victory in the 1990 election although the results were annulled by the government. She is predicted to attain a seat in parliament in this Sunday election. There is a Catch-22 to her election into parliament however, on one hand she will have the power to sway the decisions in parliament on the cost of legitimizing the government regime she has spent years advocating against. On the other hand if she doesn’t get elected the parliament and the government will continue to be ruled by a military filled and military backed governing institution.
There is also the risk of the recent loosening of restrictions being a trick and those who has spoken out be punished or jailed. Nevertheless the country needs to democratize to salvage the economy since it has been in isolation from the international community for decades.
Further readings: Huffington Post article, CBC News World Article
timeline of the arab spring
Arab spring: an interactive timeline of Middle East protests
a helpful timeline that i stumbled upon while doing research on my term paper.
Hans Rosling on global population growth
Hans Rosling on global population growth
social movements
In light of the Kony 2012 campaigns, vibe.com compiled a list of movements that has made an impact, here is the link to the article titled “Kony 2012″ and the 5 Craziest Social Movements on Recent History. This focused on the movement and how social media has made an impact on the movements. In the technology era, when you want the world to hear your cause the megaphone to use now is the internet, it gets the message spread faster and louder than any type of media before. An astounding tool for change. Majority of these movements Facebook and Twitter were the social networking sites that acted like conference rooms and ads for the movement. Here are the social movements that vibe.com compiled:
#1.Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement
#2. Arab Spring Movement
#3. The Spanish 15M Indignants movement
(Real Democracy Now 2:15 mark, people have the tools 3:09)
#4. The Direct Democracy Now! movement
#5. 15 October 2011 global protests
As our class text outlines, social movements aims to:
I. To provide a means for citizens to express their views to government and to participate in the political system. By this definition all the five movements above fit this definition.
II. To influence the politics followed by governments, international organizations, and corporations.
III. To influence views held in society.
IV. To provide information and legitimacy to governments and to international organizations
I believe that all the movements above personify the 4 main functions of social movement. All 5 provided a link between citizens and government that allowed citizens an alternative form to express their views. Each movement involved thousands of people for duration that lasted longer than a week, but most important of all, these movement were modern movements in the sense that today’s latest technologies were used to forward the movement and spread its message and widen its viewers.
Slovakia Elections and Gorilla Files
Yesterday or the day before Slovakia held a parliamentary election. According to wikipedia, Slovakia uses the Proportional Representation model of elections as do most of Europe unlike Canada which used First Past the Post model. The result of the election led to the formation of a center-left party led by a Robert Fico with his party the Smer Social Democratic Party earning 83 of the 150 seats in the assembly. The party earned 44.4% of the votes from 60% of the population eligible to vote who showed up. The party fell seven seats short of a three fifths majority.
Slovakia’s government has a President and a Prime Minister with elections for each post held at different times. The country became independent in 1993 after its split with Czechoslovakia known as the Velvet Divorce. Since 1993 the Slovakian government was led by coalition parties. This is the first time an election has almost produced a majority government in Slovakia post communist history.
This election was held two years earlier than the set election date when the former coalition government of the center-right fell because of EU talks and bailout. As dim as the prospective candidates of the election a voter simply said “All the parties are corrupt but I’m going to vote for Smer because they are a little less corrupt than the others,” Fico’s campaign platform was pledging to maintain a welfare state, increase corporate tax and hike income tax for the highest earners.
The corruption scandal that spurred the election was due to the leaked report of a wiretapped conversation revealing that some senior centre-right politicians may have been taking illegal payments in exchange for public contracts and privatisation deals and have been known thereafter as the “gorilla files.”
KONY2012 – from a different perspective
As of yesterday many people have now become an “activist” after watching a 30 min. documentary that has gone viral. But how much do we really know? I took to the story and read it but did not have to guts to watch the documentary. Having been a political science student for a couple of semesters now I should have learned to not trust one source and to straight away look for an article that might have differed from the video and the ads spreading around. And good thing I stumbled upon this write up after having my Facebook wall filled with the make Kony Famous video. Its well written and very informative. Please read it.
update* another link to read: visible children
