Machinery of dictatorship

Tuesday, 01 December 2009 14:39

The 'Union Solidarity and Development Association' (USDA), the Burmese military junta's strategically set up pillar of strength to help cling to power, held its annual conference in Naypyitaw in the last week of November.

The organization that has over 20 million members, accounting for over one-third of the total population of the country, held its conference in secrecy and without an announcement. Only the speech of Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the patron of USDA, on the closing day of the conference was published by the state-own media the New Light of Myanmar.

The media shy, Senior Gen. spoke with usual self-confidence and flaunted all-round development in the regime’s 21-year long tenure. The topics he touched on ranged from a variety of high yielding crops to construction, industry, electricity, education and the health sector. He compared the figures with those of 1988.

Despite the hollow figures reeled off by Than Shwe, as is his practice, he avoided mentioning the reality of the gap between the growing population and skyrocketing commodity prices and inflation, prosperity enjoyed only by a handful of the generals and their cronies, who have access to the rich and vast resources of the country, the huge budget deficits, lack of clean drinking water and electricity in most of the country, poor public heath care and appalling education standards.

A sheer lack of transparency, accountability, public access and management in state projects benefits only a handful of business tycoons and their cronies. The people, however, have to shoulder more and more burden of forced labour in state projects and put up with heavier taxation to fund it.

Though the junta formed the USDA as a social organization, the fact remains the regime used it as its repressive apparatus. The regime used it in suppressing and oppressing the opposition, all in the name of stability of the state. The USDA has not ushered in peace and stability in the country; it has ended up creating hostility, hatred and prejudice among the people.