China’s Deputy Minister Visits NLD | The Irrawaddy

China’s Deputy Minister Visits NLD | The Irrawaddy
KYAW PHYO THA / THE IRRAWADDY|Thursday, February 27, 2014

RANGOON — A high-ranking Chinese government official has paid a visit to the headquarters of Burma’s biggest opposition party for the first time in more than two decades, according to the party’s patron.

China’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, Ai Ping, met with senior members of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party on Wednesday.

NLD patron Tin Oo said the visit was intended to boost ties not only between the two countries, but also between the NLD and the Communist Party of China (CPC).

“After all these years, it’s the first visit by a Chinese government official to our headquarters,” Tin Oo told The Irrawaddy. He said the last time a Chinese official visited the NLD head office in Rangoon was in 1990, right after the party won a landslide victory in nationwide elections.

During the nearly one-hour meeting on Wednesday, a Chinese delegation led by Ai Ping and Yang Houlan, the Chinese ambassador to Burma, met with Tin Oo as well as NLD central committee members Nyan Win and Monywa Aung Shin.

“They only focused on promoting a good relationship between China and Burma, and they didn’t utter a word about Myitsone, Letpadaung or the Chinese gas pipeline,” said Tin Oo, referring to Chinese-backed business ventures in Burma.

“They are also curious about the NLD’s international relationships, especially if the party comes to power. We explained that we will stick to our policy of having good relationships with every country.”

According to Monywa Aung Shin, the deputy minister said China had been unable to build relations in the past with the NLD due to Burma’s military dictatorship. “Now the political situation here is more open, so they said they want to promote party-to-party relations,” the NLD member told The Irrawaddy.

He added that at least four NLD delegations had traveled to China since last year.

China has stepped up engagement with the Burmese opposition and public in the past year after some of its megaprojects in Burma sparked popular backlash. In 2011, Burmese President Thein Sein suspended the US$3.6 billion Myitsone dam project, which is backed by the state-owned China Power Investment Corporation (CPI). Suu Kyi, chairperson of the NLD, was among many public voices calling for the dam’s suspension.

During a trip to China in May last year, an NLD delegation was approached by CPI and told that the company wanted to restart the suspended project. A month earlier, Yang Houlan, the newly appointed ambassador, met with Suu Kyi at her home in Rangoon, following up on a visit by his outgoing predecessor, Li Junhua. The Chinese Embassy in Burma also donated 1 million kyats ($1,000) to the NLD National Health Network several months ago.

In December last year, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited NLD members to China for the first time. A delegation led by the party’s central executive committee members and spokesman Nyan Win made the visit.

Palau to ban commercial fishing, promote tourism | Asian Correspondent

Palau to ban commercial fishing, promote tourism | Asian Correspondent
AP News, Feb 05, 2014

A curious dolphin in Palau. Pic: Syn (Flickr CC)

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The president of Palau declared Tuesday that his Pacific island nation will ban commercial fishing and become a marine sanctuary.

President Tommy Remengesau Jr. said in a keynote address to a U.N. meeting on “Healthy Oceans and Seas” that once current fishing contracts with Japan, Taiwan and some private companies expire only fishing by island residents and tourists will be allowed in its 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone.

Remengesau said establishing “a 100 percent marine sanctuary” will enable Palau to preserve “a pristine environment” and promote snorkeling, scuba diving and ecotourism as an alternative way to grow its economy.

“It will make a difference if it’s just a matter of feeding ourselves and feeding the tourists,” he told a news conference. “As it is right now, we’re feeding the tourist and ourselves plus millions of people outside the territory.”

Palau’s population of about 20,000 people is spread across 250 islands. It shares maritime boundaries with Indonesia, the Philippines, and Micronesia.

The country announced in 2009 it was creating the world’s first shark sanctuary by banning all commercial shark fishing in its territorial waters. It has also adopted the most restrictive law against bottom trawling. In 2012, its Rock Islands Southern Lagoon was named a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Remengesau, a fisherman, said he has seen fish stocks dwindle and the size of fish grow smaller around his island nation.

With a marine sanctuary, he said, “we will do our part of making sure that there’s a healthy stock of fish in Palau that then can migrate to other places.”

Remengesau said snorkelers and scuba divers come to Palau to see sharks, which can live up to 100 years.

According to a study, he said a live shark is worth $1.9 million as a tourist attraction compared to a dead shark which is worth several hundred dollars for its fins for shark fin soup, which is an Asian delicacy.

To enforce the ban on commercial fishing, Remengesau said Palau is working with potential partners to obtain radar equipment and drones to monitor its waters.

Remengesau said climate change and global warming have been having a serious impact.
“For us in Palau and the Pacific islands, there’s been a tremendous amount of what we call unpredictable weather patterns that brings typhoons and storms and all kinds of destructive forces to the islands,” he said. “We have other problems of sea level rises.”

Palau is also urging the United Nations to adopt a new goal to clean up the world’s oceans, restore fish stocks and bring some equity to resources being taken by others.

Remengesau said “the fishing revenue has been breadcrumbs — it’s been nothing compared to, or in fairness to the billion dollar industry that this whole fishing industry is.”

Thailand at Stalemate - Asia Sentinel

Thailand at Stalemate - Asia Sentinel
03 FEBRUARY 2014

In a lose-lose scenario, the crisis continues as the Democrats use the bureaucracy to battle the government

With Thailand’s emergency election over with a minimum of violence but a maximum of confusion, it appears the government’s opponents were successful in disrupting the polls just enough to prevent a decisive outcome. The Bangkok Post called it a “lose-lose” outcome in an editorial Monday.

The results won’t be known for weeks or months but it seems unlikely a new parliament can be convened after 438 of Bangkok’s 6,671 polling places and several constituencies in the south were denied the right to vote by anti-government protesters.

That leaves Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra weakened and vulnerable to the end game in her opponents’ apparent strategy: the use of the government bureaucracy and the courts to finish off her government and perhaps put an end to electoral democracy in Thailand for an indefinite period.

While Yingluck and her Pheu Thai party remain popular, she does not have enough strength in the armed forces to impose her will and any attempt to use her allies in the police to clear the streets of illegal protesters under an existing emergency decree could provoke a military backlash. The result is stalemate. 

Having boycotted the polls and orchestrated the street protests that have roiled Bangkok in recent months, it appears that the Democrat Party and its business and royalist backers have given up all hope of beating the forces of ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra at the polls. Instead, they have done all that they can to make any polls meaningless, while creating as much chaos as possible.

Thaksin, who was ousted in a coup in 2006, can thank his own hubris for creating the conditions that gave his opponents an opening for the crisis they wanted. He and his Pheu Thai allies (with Yingluck’s apparently reluctant consent) pushed forward a blanket amnesty bill late last year that would have forgiven thousands of corruption cases, including Thaksin’s own, thus clearing the way for him to come home from his self-imposed exile in Dubai.

When the foolish and ill-timed bill was passed in parliament, the outraged public reaction was immediate and heartfelt. Yingluck withdrew the bill but the damage was done and the Democrat’s had the opening they needed to create a crisis in the streets.

Yingluck played into their hands by dissolving parliament on December 9 and seeking a fresh mandate with a snap election.

“Suthep Thaugsuban [the protest leader and one-time Democrat politician] and his team took two years to prepare for this to happen," Jatuporn Prompan, a senior Pheu Thai member, told Reuters recently. "He was preparing with the support of a network of elite bureaucrats."

The protests, sustained by massive donations from numerous large businesses in Bangkok and backed by a combination of popular support among the middle classes and thugs providing muscle, created unease, harmed the economy and allowed Suthep’s calls for ill-defined reforms to appear reasonable. 

Violence along the edges, some of which has been blamed on Suthep’s People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC),  claimed ten lives and caused hundreds of injuries in recent weeks, adding to a sense of an impending cataclysm.

Now the Democrats can use their control of the permanent bureaucratic machinery of government to finish the job. Thailand's anti-corruption commission has already launched an impeachment investigation into Yingluck’s role as head of a wasteful rice-pledging scheme that had a devastating impact on the treasury and has left unpaid farmers furious.
There are other cases in the Constitutional Court brought by the PDRC seeking to nullify Sunday’s polls. In addition, the Election Commission itself seemed to be more on the side of the Democrats than the government in the run-up to the polls.

Thaksin himself is said by sources to expect his sister to soon be out of a job. He is said to be supporting his long-time ally, the current foreign minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul, to take over the leadership of the party should Yingluck be indicted.

There are at least two new groups of supposedly nonpartisan figures proposing a series of reforms as a way out of the crisis, but it remains to be seen how much traction they will gain. There is also the murky role of the monarchy.

It has long been presumed that the king is gravely ill and that a transition to a new monarch will be underway fairly soon. Inevitably, a new monarch will be weak and uncertain during a time of crisis and many analysts believe that the Bangkok establishment deeply fears having Thaksin and his forces in control of the country during that crucial period.

So is there a way forward? In the north and northeast, furious “Red Shirt” enemies of the Bangkok status quo are said to be ready to fight against any coup d’état, which means that while massive violence has been avoided so far, the nation remains on a razor’s edge. The Red Shirts, backed by Thaksin’s resources, would far outnumber any street heavies Suthep could muster and the prospect of pitched battles even against the army is not out of the question.

Meanwhile, the elite bureaucrats will likely push Yingluck out of the way relatively soon but that will neither give the country a government nor forge a consensus for a way forward. 
For that to happen, a change will be needed in a mindset of confrontation. There appears no sign of that anytime soon.

Insight: How Thaksin's meddling sparked a new Thai crisis for PM sister | Reuters

Insight: How Thaksin's meddling sparked a new Thai crisis for PM sister | Reuters
Andrew R.C. Marshall and Jason Szep, BANGKOK Thu Jan 30, 2014 7:04pm EST


(Reuters) - Yingluck Shinawatra's journey from political nobody to prime minister was breathtakingly swift. Her premiership's descent into crisis has been just as rapid.

A political neophyte when she took office in 2011, the 46-year-old former business executive surprised many observers by steadying Thailand after years of often bloody political unrest.


Then she leaned over and pushed a button marked "SELF-DESTRUCT".

Behind Thailand's lurch into its worst crisis in years was a disastrous intervention by Yingluck's billionaire brother Thaksin, who was deposed in a 2006 military coup and now lives abroad to escape a corruption conviction.

Thaksin's meddling turned a bill that would have freed ordinary Thais charged with protest-related crimes into a controversial wider amnesty for politicians such as himself, say senior members of Yingluck's ruling Puea Thai Party.

The passing of the bill last November sparked street protests and unrest that have killed 10 people, wounded hundreds and dramatically changed Yingluck's political fortunes.

A Reuters reconstruction, based on interviews with senior Puea Thai members and its "red shirt" allies, reveals how Thaksin's intervention shattered two years of relative calm.

It also highlights how quickly political missteps can spiral into violence in Thailand, a warning sign ahead of a general election on Sunday that protesters have vowed to disrupt.

On one side is Thaksin and his younger sister Yingluck. Thaksin redrew the political map by courting rural voters in the north and northeast to gain an unbeatable electoral mandate that he then used to advance the interests of major companies, including his own. Thaksin-backed parties have convincingly won every general election since 2001.

On the other are the traditional Bangkok elites threatened by his meteoric rise, mainly the military, palace and bureaucracy, who see Thaksin as corrupt and his sister as his proxy.


"LET'S PUSH THIS THROUGH"

Thaksin once famously described Yingluck as a "clone" who could make decisions on his behalf. Her party's election slogan was "Thaksin thinks, Puea Thai acts".

But after her landslide victory in July 2011, Thailand's first female prime minister often set her own agenda, say analysts. She refused to reshuffle her Cabinet on Thaksin's demand, and deployed her formidable charm to soothe relations with her divisive brother's opponents in the establishment, particularly the military that had removed him from office.
The previous six years of unrest, which culminated in a military crackdown on Thaksin's red-shirted supporters that killed 91 people in 2010, began to fade.

But the self-exiled Thaksin wanted to come home, and would not take no for an answer.
The vehicle for his return would be a draft bill that sailed through the Puea Thai-majority parliament last August. It would grant amnesties to protesters - but not leaders - charged and jailed in waves of unrest between 2006 and 2011.

Before the bill's second reading, Thaksin's aides told Puea Thai MPs that the former prime minister wanted to radically expand it to absolve leaders on both sides, say senior Puea Thai members.

A parliamentary scrutiny committee, also dominated by Puea Thai and its coalition allies, passed a revised draft of the bill on October 18.

The amnesty now extended to murder charges laid against former Democrat Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and his deputy, Suthep Thaugsuban, for ordering the 2010 crackdown. Abhisit led an unelected government for nearly three years after a pro-Thaksin administration was removed from office by the courts in 2008.

It also quashed hundreds of corruption cases and nullified the two-year jail sentence against Thaksin, allowing the return of $1.4 billion of his seized wealth - and a ticket back to Thailand.

Yingluck had reservations about the blanket amnesty, particularly about dropping the charges against Abhisit and Suthep, said her chief of staff Suranand Vejjajiva. "But in the end the MPs agreed, 'Let's push this through'," he said.


GROWING CRISIS

The revised bill electrified Thaksin's opponents and split his supporters. Leaders of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD), a pro-government red shirt group, soon made public their anger with the party, seeing the new bill's forgiveness of Abhisit and Suthep as a denial of justice for slain protesters. At the same time, small protests by Thaksin's opponents began gathering steam.

More than half of Puea Thai MPs disagreed with the bill, but few dared to speak up, said a senior Puea Thai MP who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The way they put it, if you want to help Thaksin, support the bill. If you don't support the bill, you don't want to help Thaksin."

But Suranand denied the MPs were coerced. "No one put a gun to their head and said, 'You have to vote'," he said.

Even so, many Puea Thai insiders feared Thaksin and his sister were blind to the growing crisis, underestimating the ability of his enemies to exploit public anger against the bill, said the senior party member.

At 4 a.m. on November 1, a buzzer rang through the hall of Thailand's House of Representatives. After 19 hours and the abstention of the Democrats, bleary-eyed MPs unanimously passed the amnesty bill.

Protests against the bill, now headed for the senate, dramatically picked up. On Monday November 4, thousands of largely middle class Bangkokians gathered sporting Thai flag paraphernalia and whistles. Leading the pack was Suthep.


SNOWBALL EFFECT

Faced with public outrage, Yingluck quickly ordered the bill to be pulled from the Senate. Her advisors now spin this as proof that she listens to the public and admits her mistakes, and shift the blame for the bill onto Puea Thai and its MPs.

"As a political party, we didn't anticipate the very negative feedback from the public," Noppadon Pattama, a Puea Thai strategist who advises both Thaksin and Yingluck, told Reuters.

The aborted bill provided Yingluck's long-dormant enemies with the ammunition they needed. On November 12, Suthep resigned from parliament along with eight other Democrat MPs. The protests began their evolution into an uprising against, first, the "Thaksin regime", and then Thailand's system of electoral democracy itself.

"Once they were participating in the rallies against Thaksin, people who were against the bill became people against the system," the Puea Thai MP told Reuters. "They got their critical mass and snowball effect."

Jatuporn Prompan, a UDD leader and senior Puea Thai member, said he could see that Suthep and other establishment figures had long been planning a fresh uprising. He warned party leaders that the amnesty bill was just the trigger they needed.

"Suthep Thaugsuban and his team took two years to prepare for this to happen," Jatuporn Prompan, a leader of the UDD and senior Puea Thai member, told Reuters. "He was preparing with the support of a network of elite bureaucrats."

The protests unleashed by the aborted bill have added to a perfect storm of crisis for Yingluck, who has been a caretaker prime minister - with limited powers - since dissolving parliament on December 9 to call a snap election.

Thailand's anti-corruption commission has launched an impeachment investigation into her role as head of a wasteful and opaque rice-pledging scheme. Farmers waiting payment under the multi-billion-dollar scheme are blocking provincial highways in protest.

Thousands of protesters still occupy major intersections in an attempt to "shut down" Bangkok. The capital is braced for violence during Sunday's election, which the Democrat Party is boycotting.

Protesters want the election postponed until parliament is replaced by an unelected "people's council" to reform Thai politics. They also demand Yingluck's resignation and the exile of the entire Shinawatra clan.

Yingluck refuses to go. Even today, said Suranand, she broadly stands by the amnesty bill that might yet destroy her.

"She sees it as: If you can forgive everyone, and everyone accepts that forgiveness, then you can reset everything and move on," he said. "Of course, it didn't turn out that way."

(Additional reporting by Aubrey Belford and Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Alex Richardson)