Swan Ah Shin’s Power

 Myanmar Military Junta is nowadays using the “Swan Ah Shin” to exert POWER, terrorizing its citizens and opposition. We all first came to know about the “Swan Ah Shin” during the Depayin massacre. And now, we got the news of Myanmar Government announcing that they are going to use those “Swan Ah Shin” to prevent the possible disturbances, protests or demonstrations during the Martyr’s day celebration.

Who are they? Apart from their basic power force, the Myanmar Military, the other armed wing is their lapdog Myanmar Police Force. Actually “Swan Ah Shin” is the third or the grass root level power base; they are promoting to get 100% control of all the citizens of Burma.

Between the various stages of Government machinery and that “Swan Ah Shin”; there are other local authorities through which they wielded their power. Head of ten houses, hundred houses etc consists of local goons, business men and other influential persons.

“Swan Ah Shin”  are formed from Fire brigades, First Aid organizations, Women’s organizations, Kyant Phut (USDA or Union Solidarity and Development Association )& Criminal/convicts released from jails. These “Swan Ah Shin” were involved in protest shouting, holding posters against DASSK during her trips of organization around the country and the main culprits in Depayin Massacre.

We all have to accept that even without those supplementary power bases, Myanmar Military is very powerful. When added with the supplementary power of “Swan Ah Shin”, SPDC Generals could definitely wield enormous power on each and every Myanmar citizens.

But ‘the amount of power ones have’ is not important. Only the ways they use that power can determine the character and virtues. It may be childish but I wish to quote the popular catch phrase of Spiderman;” Power comes with responsibility.”

Yes, if a strong person snatch the hand bag from a poor frail lady or took away the food of a poor small child, all of us would look down on that bully as villain. Even if that person were very powerful, even if all others were scared of his enormous power, we all would hate, or wish some one could talk to him, scold or teach a lesson physically.

Yet if any powerful man reached out to help the mugger victim or the young child in danger, we all would praise him as a hero.

It is exactly like donation. Lord Buddha taught us to donate the big amount like a banyan tree but got a very small reward amounting to a banyan seed if the donation is just to show off. If we donate with the good intention / pure heart and the ones who donate a small amount like a banyan seed but reaping the huge benefit as big as a banyan tree.

So in this world, ‘the way we use the POWER we have’ is more important than the amount of power we have.POWER is the ability to do something or to influence other people do things for the power holder. Usually the POWER is visibly legitimate, coercion of force or made to be legitimate in that circumstance and sometimes via the display of the signs and symbols of POWER. It is "the ability to influence the behaviour of others" with or without resistance. So power is the ability to impose one's will on others, even if those others resist in some way.

"By power is meant every opportunity/possibility existing within a social relationship, which permits one to carry out one's own will, even against resistance, and regardless of the basis on which this opportunity rests." (Max Weber, Basic Concepts in Sociology)

Political power is a type of power held by a person or group or a government machinery in a society.

The POWER during our Fascist Revolution had a liberating force and had transformed our country’s political landscape.

But the POWER of SPDC Generals has been oppressive and successfully shackled and squeezed the whole population, all the oppositions, NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi with the iron grip.
Legitimate POWER can be explained as the POWER of democratically elected government. Usually this government’s POWER is exercised through Virtue.

However, the illegitimate governments like SPDC autocratic governments’ POWER came from the instilling and institutionalisation of fear.  SPDC exerts its Power through Terror.Please allow me to quote some interesting observations and comments of “Scott Carrier, Mother Jones, California, June 27, 2006” about how the Myanmar Military Junta wielded POWER to induce FEAR in each and every citizens of Burma.

He asked the Burmese citizens he met on the road,” What’s it like to live here? According to him, the response would be the same, first a turning away, moving the body and the head to the side, then a glazing over of the eyes, a gaze without focus. It was a turning inward, pulling a shell around their bodies.

”It is dangerous for us,” one man said. “There are spies everywhere.”

”Everyone in Myanmar has either gone to jail or knows someone who has gone to jail for saying the wrong thing. I have a friend in Insein [pronounced ‘insane’] Prison who held up a sign at a protest. The sign said only one word, ‘Freedom.’ His sentence is seven years!

Even other Western tourists spoke in whispers, turning both directions to see if anyone was listening. This syndrome has been named among some NGO workers as ‘Burma Head.’

In his book of Discipline and Punish:The Birth of the Prison (1977), Foucault discussed the social effects of surveillance by using a prison designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1787, called the Panopticon as a model. The cells are arranged in a circle around a central observation tower, so that one person inside the tower can see into every cell at all times, but the prisoners who are able to see the tower, never really know whether there is a person in there watching them, or not. The observer can see out, but the observed can’t see in.

Hence the major effects of the Panopticon were identified as ‘inducing in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power’.

In fact arranging things that surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers.

This was why there was no visible military presence in the city. It wasn’t necessary. The people controlled themselves, even tourists were not immune.

In the Panopticon of Burma, you were a prisoner among prisoners, each with your own cell.

The effect was a deadening of desire, a flat-lining of curiosity and humor, and loneliness hung in the air, heavy as the smog cloud that covers all of Asia. There was not a buzz or a whir or a whisper of testosterone among the men and the women; although many were beautiful and had not an ounce of glamour, not a scent of sensuality among them.

Usually the Political power is ultimately derived from military and police control using the legal and taxation systems of countries.

Abuse of power or bullying is the destructive or senseless use of political power improperly or unfairly or unjustly or lawlessly.

We see the abuse of power when too much power has been concentrated into a few individuals like SPDC Generals, without a proper check and balance system. There has been no room for political debate, public criticism, and other types of correctives. To counter these potential problems, people have devised and practised different solutions that dictators like SPDC are not responsible to answer in the parliments and free from the effects of back lash of people’s displasure usually  manifested in free and fair elections.

Abuse of power by SPDC could be controlled by: _

1.       the sharing of power with the pro-democracy opposition groups.

2.       the placing of limitations on the extent of power they could have by drawing a proper constitution drawn and supported by all the citizens but not the fake one from Naung Nha Pin conference, and

3.       the creation of protective rights for individuals through legislation or charters such as human rights, Ethnic Minorities’ Rights, Religious Rights, Individual’s Rights etc. or by

4.       Real separation of powers into legislative, executive and judiciary powers.

All the above could be done by the Interim Government and the successive democratically elected governments.

Political Science Perspectives

There are various levels of political power exertion and its implications.

1st dimension political power is the power of decision-making. Now SPDC and Than Shwe monopolized all the power.

2nd dimension of power, agenda-setting by elites who worked in the backrooms and away from public scrutiny. SPDC needs the real imput of advise by the Burmese Intellectuals but up to now all the advises fell on the deaf ears.

 3rd dimension of power, preference-shaping, another important aspect of normative power in politics like cultural hegemony. Second Pinlong like conference is needed for our country.

These 3 dimensions of power are today often considered defining aspects of political power by political researchers. These are also known as the 3 Faces of Power.

The power in human society should be part of a training process in which everyone, from a Prime Minister to a homeless person, played their role within the power structure of a free and democratic society.

Legitimacy & Term in office

A Head of State may however seize power by force in a coup d'état or revolution. But the dictator or authoritarian or totalitarian ruler, who use the oppressive nature of power once acquired. Force is often the true origin of power. But to keep the victor’s right, formal legitimacy must be found, even if by fictitious claim of continuity such as forged descent or legacy from a previous dynasty.

(1)SPDC claims that Tatmadaw fought for  independence was false. Daw Suu’s father General Aung San’s BIA and BDA only could claim this credit.

(2)The SPDC claimed that they have been fighting all the rebels but actually we, people had paid them the salary to do that job.

(3)Their claims of, “they had saved Myanmar from disintegration by Federalism and corrupted parlimentarian politicians” is just a false propaganda to seize power illegally from the U Nu’s democratic government.

(4)Tatmadaw top guns tried themselves to be related  or desendents of old Burmese kings. Ne Win’s marriage to Yadana Nat Mae was a flop. Saw Maung think he was Kyansittha and later became insane and put to a “Dunkey Pension”. Than Shwe is claiming to be the desendent of Thi Baw and liked to be called Min Tayar Gyi of Yadanapon Nay Pyi Daw.

(5) Dictators often use democratic titles, though some proclaim themselves monarchs.

Another type of extra-constitutional imposition, often also by changing the constitution.Now SPDC is planning to stage another coup to legalized their loot of power by using the Nyaung Nha Pin Lane (Lane=lies) convention although it was already dismissed by the people and the whole world as a sham.

SPDC Junta exerts power by numerous ways to constraint on all the Myanmar citizen’s action and it possesses its power by a complex strategic situation in Myanmar citizens’ daily social, political, business , religious lifes by imposing both constraint and enablement.

The imposition needs coercion of force or threat of force or punishments including long term imprisonment and tortures. SPDC Generals have both physical power, social power, political power, administrarive power, judicial power, power like a CEO of the country, legalistative power etc. Its "influence" is most of the time supported by spin doctors and all the strictly controlled media.

So SPDC’s "power" is its unilateral ability, real and perceived,  potential to bring about significant change, usually in Myanmar citizen’s lives.

The SPDC Generals use the direct and personal use of force of Military and police for coercion. And Myanmar Military Junta is nowadays obtain the secondary power by delegating some of their power to  “Swan Ah Shin” to exert the PUPPET POWER on its citizens and opposition. The puppet master is the same military propaganda wicked wizard Senior General Than Shwe. It is awkward to notice that the Great Puppet Master himself is under the spell of the black magic powers of astrologers and an intimate Witch Daw Kyaing Kyaing. And it is a mockery that she is also influenced and controlled by her greediness and the extended family members: daughters and illegitimate son-in-law.

SPDC’s Power as Terror

SPDC Junta’s power is negatively based on practising state terrorism on its own citizens. See how they effectively use the terror of “Swan Ah Shin” on NLD Daw Suu and especially during Depayin Massacre. Now they are threatening the people and opposition with this “Swan Ah Shin” again.

The SPDC leaders use to summon the resources to its own political, economic, and cultural agenda by building a network of peoples who can support them rise to higher levels of power.
We can see how the ideological state apparatuses are used - the political, economic, military, social machinery - to further gain the legitimation to have power over others eg “Naung Ngha Pin Lane Nyi lar Gan”.

According to the natural laws or more definitely LAW OF PHYSICS: ‘to every force or power or reaction, there is equal countre reaction or resistence force or power’. Now SPDC, Tatmadaw, police and  “Swan Ah Shin” thought that through their enormous power, people could be suppressed. Right! Burmese/Myanmar people have been suppressed into near total submission. But it has been causing a resentment and hatred causing a pent up pressure inside. Now this POTENTIAL PRESSURE is rising. One day it would definitely explode into a PEOPLE’S POWER REVOLUTION. Then the SPDC cohorts and lapdogs (Police), hunting hounds, watch dogs (BSI, new MI), guard dogs and barking dogs (SPDC media persons) would definitely annihilated. (Sorry SPDC for borrowing your own terminology and using against all of you).

In conclusion, let me borrow another term of Chairman Mau’s propaganda, you all would face an unpleasant ending, in Burmese, “Zat Thein_ kaung mhar ma hote phu”

BO AUNG DIN

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