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The Goodness of the Pie
By Saneitha Nagani
They say that, the goodness of the pie is in the eating.
Likewise the rare and recent meeting
between Daw Aung San Suu Kyiand the Burmese President Thein Sein
at Naypyidaw, even though
Daw Suu went as far as telling the reporters that, From my point
of view, I think the President
wants to achieve a positive change, is yet to progress into a
genuine dialogue. The meeting must
have went well by looking at Daw Suus body language as well as
her comment that she was happy
and satisfied with the meeting. But with no more than bare
sketches of the whole an hour long
encounter out in the open we could regard the affair as just pie
in the sky for now.
Maybe Daw Suu has been cautious because it was still at an early
stage or because not much can be
expected from the first meeting and she must be just like the
hunter in a story. In the story my
father told me, there was once a hunter very skilled with his
bow and arrows (like Robin Hood I
suppose). One day he and his son went hunting and to their
surprise they saw a dragon flew off just
in front of them. The father told the son not to mention about
this to anyone back at the village. The
son being a foolish young man did not listen to his father and
he went on bragging about the
encounter. Not only that he was bragging he put a bet with his
colleagues challenging them that if
they dont believe him they should go and asked his father. The
father was a wise man. He had
nothing to prove that there was a dragon. He had to protect his
reputation. So when asked he simply
replied, No, I havent seen such thing. The son lost his money
and he was very disappointed with
the father.
Then the two went hunting again and this time they saw a deer
scratching its ear with its hind leg
and the hunter shot the deer that very instant and hit the deer
in three places with one arrow the
hind leg, the ear and the head skewered. This time the father
told the son to do his betting with the
villagers since they now have evidence to prove. To me, Daw Suu
has to be cautious since it is the
regime that has be renowned for not keeping its promise that she
was dealing with. To be satisfied
and happy with her first encounter, the meeting must have been
more than what she musthave
expected. [For the benefit of the readers I have included the
address to the nation made on 23
September 1988 by the Chairman of the State Law and Order
Restoration Council General Saw
Maung in the Appendix.]
Before we explore a bit further we need to have a look at what
obligations each side has and how
binding, legally or morally can the promises one side made to
another during the meeting. In
accordance with the formalities of a treaty and state practice,
a verbal agreement reached between
the two parties can create a binding obligation upon them.
Relying on a well known Ihlen
Declaration in Eastern Greenlandcase, the Danish Government
relied on that undertaking by
Norwegian Government conveyed to it through the Norwegian
Foreign Minister, Ihlen that it will not
create difficulties fro Denmarks claims on Greenland. However,
the Norwegian Government failed
to honour that promise and the International Court of Justice
found that, Even if the Ihlen
declaration could not be considered as recognition of Denmarks
claims, it nevertheless created an
obligation binding upon Norway to refrain from contesting Danish
sovereignty over Greenland.
If we are to understand human nature as Thomas Hobbes, Glaucon
and Machivelli, we are
confronted with a dilemma whether to trust or not to trust a
regime whose record on that front has
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not been very good at all. As the three philosophers came to the
same conclusion when considering
human nature that, without the fear of detection and punishment
there is nothing to dissuade
people from harming and stealing from others, how are we to be
confident of the Burmese
President talking to Daw Suu was in good faith and not because
of some emergencies he was
facing? We have been through Hobsons the state of nature before
a life that has been solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish and short. For Daw Suu trust in its second
important feature is more importantfor her. She sees trust as a
means of making our social life simpler and safer, and making
possible
cooperative activities which each of us could not undertake
alone. Trust is required for many
cooperative activities which seem to make human life both
livable and worth living, such as,
friendship and love, growing old and raising children and so
on.
For Buddhists it is not only on legal (yazathat) that human
affairs operate, one has to take into
account the natural law (dhammathat) as well. As Glaucon argued,
a person might be able to get
away with doing something bad if he or she was not caught.
However, in accordance with
dhammathat whether one was caught or not one would still have to
account for what one did
either in this life or the next and many more until one attains
liberation from samsara (the vicious
cycle of birth and rebirth). According toAbhidhammaour kamma
forming actions will follow us likethe wheels follow the horses
that pulled the cart. It will only be a matter of time for our
kamma to
ripen.
As for the pie, most responsible governments will make it grow
for the people. Even the government
in China in spite of its corruption and its dictatorial rule has
put the economic welfare of its people
even though it may be at the expense of other people in Asia,
Africa and Latin America. In contrast,
the successive military governments in Burma have not only kept
the economic pie to themselves
but they make bad governments into their worse kind by sharing
the pie with the Chinese and Thais
and not the Burmese people. The case of damming the mother
Irrawaddy to sell electricity to the
Chinese in Yunnan and the Thais across the border is the point.
The people in Burma, both theBama
and the ethnic minorities have yet to taste the goodness of the
pie. Ministers nowadays were notsacked for either health reasons or
incompetence any more, they were being sacked for corruption.
It seems like punishing a person for doing something which is
natural can any one in Burma
imagine a military official not being corrupt in Burma? Another
pie in the sky, or pigs might fly if we
find one who is not corrupt. END
Appendix
SawMaungsPromiseIMG.pdf
