The Use of “Democracy” as an Adjective in-Myanmar Newspaper English-

NANG SENG HONG

Introduction

The nature of the human beings is to look for a better life and individual welfare.They believe that a stable government and a system of political rights can lead them tosafety and prosperity, to a “good society”. Democracy tends to be a system of choice, because people can choose to vote and elect their representatives. This is a system of government employed by 63 percent of the world’s countries. However, democracyhas still not become established in 31 out of the more than 120 countries in the world.

History and Background

Burma was a British colony and got independence in 1948. After independence,Burma was a parliamentary democracy and a relatively rich country for the world of atthat time. Due to reasons of internal struggle, Nay Win led a military coup and came to power in 1962. Nay Win’s military government ran the country with socialist economic policies. Burma suffered due to lost human rights and faced economic crisis. Nation-wide demonstrations were held in 1988 in support of Burma becoming a democraticcountry. The military under the name of their State Law and Order RestorationCouncil (SLORC) killed nearly 3,000 demonstrators, but promised the country theywould establish a democratic government. The military junta changed the name“Burma” to “Myanmar” in 1989. The National League of Democracy (NLD) led byAung San Suu Kyi got over 80% votes in a 1990 election but SLORC refused toaccept these results. Aung San Suu Kyi was put under strict house arrest in 1989 andthousands of political prisoners were arrested and sent to jail.2Under the authority of the military, a National Convention was held in 1993. Themilitary junta did not accept any suggestions from the NLD and tightly controlled the National Convention. The NLD announced that this constitution would not representfor people or minorities and boycotted the National Convention, which stoppedfunctioning in 1996. Nevertheless, SLORC created a New Constitution without anyinterference by its few elected members.Under internal and external pressure, SLORC renamed itself the State Peace andDevelopment Council (SPDC) in 1997 and began the implementation of what theyclaim will be a 7-step road map to democracy. The military junta has been facing pressure to release political prisoners and move toward national reconciliation from theUN and the major Western powers. The SPDC increased fuel prices in August 2007,which resulted in Buddhist monks leading peaceful marches with the people and callingfor a solution to the problems of the humanitarian crises at hand. Nevertheless, themilitary junta crackdown was violent, with the shooting, beating and arresting of many

monks.The world criticized the violent crackdown and the EU decided to extend their sanctions against the military junta. However, the military junta announced that, theconstitution being completed, a referendum would be held in May 2008 and a newmulti-party democratic election would be held in 2010. The SPDC refused to acceptthe result of the 1990 election and ignored the world’s suggestion to make a dialogwith pro-democracy groups and minorities or to move towards national reconciliation.In stead, they affirmed that their 7-step Road Map would soon be complete.

Research Question

Because of the difficulties facing the establishment of democracy in Myanmar, in this paper I would like to explore how the military defines the meaning of

democracy

andhow this could relate to the establishment of a democratic government in Myanmar.

Methodology

All media in Myanmar are under the strict control of the military junta. For the purpose of this research, I investigated the term of

democracy

and morphologicallyrelated words from the one daily English newspaper published in Myanmar called the

“The New Light of Myanmar”

(NLM). This newspaper was established in 1914, but isnow used by the military junta to promote their doctrines both internally andexternally. Another reason for using this newspaper was that the NLM includes articlesoutlining the government’s desires, policies, and political, economic, social objectives.If, we can analyze the term of

democracy

and it collocations carefully, we woulddiscover what the military image of

democracy

might be and what the chances are of ademocratic government being established in Myanmar.

Selection of Materials

May, June and July of 2008 were a very sensitive period in the history of Myanmar. Nearly one week before the military’s referendum on a constitution was to be held,Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar and approximately 133,000 people perished, with another 2.4 million people losing their property and becoming homeless.

Nevertheless, themilitary not only ignored international requests to delay the referendum but refused toaccept aid also. They controlled the issuance of visas for UN staff and journalists whointended to observe the referendum.The disaster areas had been emptied and the referendum lacked internationalapproval, but the military junta announced that this constitution was ratified and promulgated by 98.12 of those who voted. The world criticized the referendum as not being either free and fair and because voting for a new constitution was deemed moreimportant than the lives of the cyclone victims. With many thousands of helplesssurvivors being ignored, the military neglected humanitarian problems to solidify

power only. Seeking release from this pressure, the military tried to prove that theywere promoting democratic government, and, through NLM articles, tried to presentto the world their ideals and assumptions concerning democracy.The issues of the NLM, published in English for May, June and July of 2008 weredownloaded from the internet at URLhttp://www.myanmargeneva.org/newseng- printE.htm. The data from the digitized versions were downloaded as PDF files andAdobe Reader was used to track the context in which democracy and morphologicallyrelated words were used. The sentences so found with

democracy

and

democracy

-related words were copied and pasted to a separate word document.

Analysis of the Data

First, sentences containing democracy were separated according to whether

democracy

was a noun or an adjective. If a noun appeared, sorting was done accordingto whether

democracy

appeared by itself or was together with another adjective. If

democracy

was presented in a positive context, I ranked its use as being positive, but if the context was problematic, I considered the use to be negative. If it was presented inneither a good nor a bad context, I considered its use to be neutral. A collocationsearch was then done and I noted whether the words which collocated were nouns or adjectives. The data represents a three-month period.

Results

Table 1 – Democracy as a noun

Context

May

June

July

Positive

Negative

Neutral

Total

Democracy

appeared as a noun with a positive meaning one time in May, seventimes in June and two times in July. Negative meanings were 4, 34 and 24 times andneutral meanings were 5, 26, 23 times in May, June, and July. Immediately below youcan find positive, negative, and neutral examples:

(1)

"That is a giant step for transition to democracy to satisfy the people’s desire" or “Do not make the goal of democracy far away from the people”. (Lu thit (Padauk Mya, NLM 31/7/2008 7, line 8);

(2)

"When I read news stories that in consequence of too much democracy freedom,cases of shooting spree took place in schools and many children lost their lives in theevents, the news about rapacious George Soroz,[…and other examples…]. I feel thatas for our country with fine cultural traditions, such democracy is like a gift of chickenthat is given when bird flu is spreading." (Hlaing Bwa (Parami) “My knowledge of democracy”NLM 13/7/2008:6, line 61,72)