India
Nonviolent resistance to British colonialism led by Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru brought independence to India in 1947. Its 1950 constitution, with 395 articles, is the longest written constitution of any independent nation. Over the past six decades, Indian democracy has weathered several bouts of sectarian violence and the country has remained unified.
In 2004, the Indian National Congress Party (INC) and its allies won an unexpected victory in the general election, defeating the National Democratic Alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
See "India's Democracy Has Many Voices."
Government
Executive -- India's executive branch is headed by a president and a prime minister.
• President Pratibha Patil, India’s first woman president, was elected by India’s Parliament and state legislatures to a five-year term in 2007.
• Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, India’s first Sikh prime minister, was appointed in 2004 after his INC Party led a coalition of political forces to an unexpected victory in legislative elections.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
DEMOCRACY AROUND THE WORLD
Saturday, September 6, 2008
ယု္
ယု္ဏင့္ဆာ. ယု္အဲဟွးဟွ၀္၊
ယု္ဆုိဒ္ဏွ္ ယု္အဲေ၀့ဍ၀္၊
ယု္ထူရူ့ ယု္အဲတ၀္တ၀္၊
ယ္ုဆု္ခႜာင္ ယု္အဲယု္လ၀္၊
ယု္လိက္ဏွ္ ယု္အဲယု္ပ၀္.၊
ယု္ထီ့ခါန္. ယု္အဲလုက္က၀္၊
ယု္ထီသုိ၀္ ယု္အဲသၞ၀့္။
ဏင့္ဆာ.- ဆုိဒ္- ထူရူ- ဆု္ခႜာင္၊
လိက္-ထီ့ခါန္.-ထီသုိ၀္ နုိဲစာင္၊
ဟု္မာဆုိင္ေ႓့မု္ဍဳဂ္ပါင္၊
ပညာ့ေဃွံ ဏွ္ ဟု္႓းကႜာင္၊
ဆံင္းမံင္းထာင္ စွ္ဆံင္းမံင္းထာင္၊
စွ္ဆံင့္မံင္း ေယာ၀္လာ.ေအယာင္၊
႓းဍံင္ဟု္ထင္း ေခါဟ္လံင္႓ႜာင္၊
ေခါဟ္လံင္ေဍာဟ္ အွ္ေ၀့နဳိဲစာင္၊
ထင္းထံင္ဍင္ဍီး ဍးစုိ၀္ယာင္။
´ဆု္ယ၀္ခါ့´
ဆု္ယ၀္ခါ့ေခါ၀္.အုဂ္၊
ေခါ၀္.သုိဲ့ထင္းဟု္လံင္႓ုဂ္၊
လီဟွယ့္ပ် သူးသူး၊
လင္အွ္ကြယ္ သိင္းလာယွဴး၊
သင့္၀၀္ေဖါဟ္ ဟွင္းကုိ၀္၊
လု္သိင္းခီ့ ယ္ုဟွဳိင့္စုိ၀္၊
ကႜင္ကႜာင္းဖ၀့္ ႓င္ဖါင္း၊
နဳိင္မုိင့္ထင္း ဟု္သာစာင္း၊
ကု္တုဂ္စုိဲ ဟု္စာ္၊
ထီ့လု္အွ္ ကၞာ့သာ္၊
ယးအွ္ကုံ လု္နံင္း၊
မႝီဟ္သီး လင္အင္းကံင္း၊
ေဍာဟ္အင္းခႜံင္ ခြိက္ယွး၊
ဆင္းၾသဳဂ္ အင္းခြယ္ပ်၊
ေဆ၀္ေဍဖႜာင္ သာအင္း၊
သီ့လင္ထုက္ ယး႓းယွင္း။
မာလုက္၀ယ္
ဖႜဳံေဖါဟ္လု္၀ီ.
ထုင္းလီ.ထုင္းထာင္
အးစာင္အးဖႜဳံ
လု္ကံင္.ဆု္မာ
လုက္ခႜာလင္႓ုိင္
ဍးလုိင္လု္ယ၀့္
ပ၀္.သ၀့္ထၝံင့္
လံင့္ကံင္လုက္ေခႜ
လု္ေက၀္ေဍလိက္
လင္႓ိက္လုဂ္ခႜာ ဏိင္းလု္ယာ။
ပု္႓ုိ၀္ဏါင္းယုိ၀္
ဍးစုိ၀္လင္.ခါင့္
သာဟွာင့္စြးတယ္
ဖုက္ဖယ္ဏံင္သာ
ဆ္ုမာပၱံင္
ေက၀္ဟွံင္လိက္လာဲ
တု္ကႜယ္ေဍာဟ္လင္ ဃွဴ့ဃွင္မာေလာဟ္ဖႜဳံယွင္ေဖါဟ္။
ဖံင္းပႝာ.မိင္္
ဖံင္းပႝာ.မိင္ မု္ေလာဟ္ကုိဲ
ေဖါဟ္သးကုိ၀္ဟွာေဍ။
အွ္ကုံေထာ၀္ခါင့္မြာဲ၀ွ၀ွ၊
ကုိ၀္ဟွာခါခႜိက္ပ်။
စာင္းလင့္ေ၀့ဖ၀္.ေဍမု္ဖံင္း
ေဖါဟ္သးေယွာတ္ေမံကံင္း။
သ၀့္မာတယ္ေ၀့ ပီပူပါ၊
က်ဳဂ္ေလံ ေဍကုိ၀္ယွာ။
ေဖါဟ္သးဟွင္ေပ၀့္ဟွာင္လု္ထိုင့္
က်ဳဂ္ေလံပါကုိ၀္ဖုိင့္။
ေဖါဟ္သးလုက္ဆိင့္႓းထုင္က်ာ
ထီ့ဖါ.က်ဳဂ္လင္သာ။
နဳိင္ဖ၀္.နဳိင္ဖ၀္.ေဍဖု္အ၀္
ကုိ၀္ပါင္သုဂ္ယွ၀္ယွ၀္။
ဆုိဒ္ဆတၞဳိင့္ ဟွးသးေအခုိင့္
၁။ စွ္သာလုက္ေခႜ ထီ့ခါန္ေၿပဏွ္၊
ဖံင္ေဖႜ႓းသာ ကုက္ကုိ၀္ဟွာလွ္။
ေဟွ၀္အြာဆုိဒ္ဆ ဖံင္ေဖႜ၀္႓းဏွ္
ေဏ၀.္႓းလု္ဖိုင့္ ဖံင္းေအခုိင့္ဟွဟ္။
ပု္လုိင့္အးဖႜံင္ ေအဍးခံင္ဍ၀္
လံင့္ကံင္ကုိ၀္႓ႜင္ ခုိ၀္ပု္ဍင္လ။
ဃွဴဃွင္မူးခြါ့ မြာဲတုင္.ဆာ့ခ၀့္
လု္ယာ့တာ္ေခါဟ္ ဆုိဒ္ဖႜဳံေဖါဟ္သီး
ပါေဍာဟ္ယုဂ္ယာန္း ႓းတုင္ယွင္းလွ္။
မူ.ထင္းေလင္.၀၀္ ထာင္အးထ၀္ဏွ္
ေဆ၀္ယွ၀္.၀ါဖႜင္ လု္မုဂ္ဍင္ဏွ္
ဖုိင့္ဃွင္ဖံင္းထး ေအခုိင့္ဟွဟ္။
၂။ အွ္ပါမုက္ကုိဲ မာလာ ေဃွ၀္ဟွဟ္
လုက္ေခႜစွ္သာ လိက္ေဟွ၀္အြာအွ္
အးဖါအးစိင္ ထံင္လုက္ကႜိင္ဏွ္
ကုိ၀္မိင္မာေလာဟ္ ေသွ္ေအေဍာဟ္ထ၀့္
တာ္ေခါဟ္ဍဳဂ္ပါင္ ဖႜံင္အးစုိင္ယ၀့္။
႓ုဂ္ယာင္မိင္ဖႜဟ္ ပညာ ့အွ္ဍ၀္
ယွဴး႓ွ္ေဍက်ဳိင္ ဆု္ဟွယ့္ၿပဳိင့္သီး
ဖႜံင့္နဳိင္အးဆင့္ ဖႜာဲသယ္ဃွင့္အး
ဍဳံဌာန့္ဆု္မာ ဆုိဒ္ဟွင္.ခႜာခ၀့္
ထ႟ာေဖွ္ကဲ ဖႜံင့္ဟွးဖႜဲယ၀့္
ဍဳဂ္ဏဲလ၀္လင္ ပညာ့ဖါန္ဏွ္
အး႓ႜင္ဖံင္းထး ကုိ၀္ဖုိင့္ဟွဟ္။
၃။ ႓္ွ္လာ.ထုက္သုဲိ့ အင္းကုဂ္ဃွဳဲိဏွ္
ေဍာဟ္ေၿပဖုက္ကႜံင္ ၾသဳက္ထံင္သီး
ပၱံင္တာင္၀ယ္ ကဲဖုက္ဖယ္လွ္။
ကးဟွယ္လု္ဖႜဟ္ ေ႓့သာအွ္ဍ၀္
ေဍာဟ္ထ၀့္ဆု္မာ ဆုိဒ္ဟွာင္.ခႜာ႓၀့္
ေဟွ၀္အြာကုိ၀္စာင္ တာင္ဍဳဂ္ပါင္ယ၀့္
ေလ၀္ထာင္လု္ကး ထီသုိ၀္အးလ၀္ ဆု္ဍးအဲကုဲ
ေ႓့ေဖါဟ္လီဟွဟ္ သီ့ကႜီေယာ၀္.ဆုိင္
လု္လုက္ုလုိင္ဏယ့္ လုက္ဖုိင္မိင္ဖႜဟ္
ယွဴး႓ွ္ကုိ၀္႓ႜင္ ထုက္ေကာ၀္ၾကင္လွ္
သာယင္သံင္းထ လ၀္ဟွဳိင့္လွ္။
စ၀္အဲဆုိဒ္
Friday, September 5, 2008
Rifts behind Thailand's political crisis
It has been nearly two years since an unexpected military coup deposed then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and appeared to freeze Thailand's democratic evolution in its tracks.
The country has experienced 15 months of benign military rule, the drafting of a new constitution, and a general election which returned a party run by Mr Thaksin's allies to office.
Yet there is still a sense of unending crisis, of a country still deeply polarised over the former prime minister and his attempts to transform Thailand.
The occupation of the main government offices in central Bangkok this week by protesters from the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) has underscored just how difficult it is to end this turbulence.
Thaksin's critics
The PAD first emerged in September 2005. At the time it was a largely personal crusade by maverick media mogul Sondhi Limtongkul, once a passionate Thaksin supporter who turned on his former mentor after feeling abandoned when his business went bankrupt.
But it picked up momentum at the end of that year as public unease grew over the tax-free sale of the Shinawatra family telecoms business for an estimated $2bn (£1bn) and escalated into a movement that helped bring the seemingly impregnable Thaksin administration down.
Most Thais probably thought that was the last they would see of the PAD.
A tank on a highway in Bangkok, on 25 September 2006
The PAD was behind the street protests that preceded the coup in 2006
But in May this year the movement reformed, starting a series of boisterous demonstrations that have periodically brought central Bangkok to a halt.
There are a number of factors that explain why this happened.
Firstly, the key PAD leaders, in particular Sondhi Limthongkul and Chamlong Srimuang, an ascetic former military general and mayor of Bangkok who played a key role in the anti-government protests back in 1992, remained virulently opposed to allowing any of Mr Thaksin's associates a role in government.
They rejected last December's election victory by the pro-Thaksin People's Power Party (PPP), arguing it was achieved by vote-buying (the impartial Election Commission contradicts this view).
Samak Sundaravej has proved surprisingly skilful in handling the challenge from the PAD, despite a series of verbal gaffes early on in his term
They have now refined their argument to propose rural voters in Thailand are too poorly educated to be allowed to elect a parliament, and that it should be a largely appointed body instead.
The PAD has also ridden a national wave of anxiety over the future of the monarchy, once 80-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej is no longer on the scene.
Its supporters believe Mr Thaksin and the PPP have a republican agenda - hence the sea of yellow shirts seen at PAD rallies, yellow being the colour associated with the king.
Government bungles
Secondly, Thaksin Shinawatra made a triumphant return to Thailand in February. He insisted he had abandoned any political ambition, but few believed him, and he was widely assumed to be funding and influencing the governing party.
Although banned from holding political office for five years, with his own party in government many Thais assumed he would find a way to overturn the ban, and dismiss various charges of corruption and abuse of power that were pending against him.
File image of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej
The PAD accuse Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej of incompetence
Thirdly, the government of Samak Sundaravej bungled its first months in office, and provoked fears that it was more concerned with helping Mr Thaksin than sorting out the country's other problems.
Its attempt to revise the military-drafted constitution was the spark that brought the PAD out on the streets in May. They feared constitutional amendments might offer a legal justification for throwing out the charges against Mr Thaksin.
The PAD also accused the government of being corrupt, incompetent and authoritarian.
When the government agreed to support Cambodia's bid to have a disputed temple on their common border listed as a World Heritage Site, the PAD saw this as selling out Thai sovereignty for Mr Thaksin's business interests in Cambodia. The resulting row forced the foreign minister, who had once been Mr Thaksin's lawyer, to resign.
Skillful handling
However developments in recent weeks have undermined the PAD's claims.
The government backed away from changing the constitution, although it still says it wants to do this. It allowed a no-confidence debate in parliament.
Then the legal cases against Mr Thaksin started moving with surprising speed and vigour. His lawyers were jailed for contempt of court. His wife was sentenced to three years in prison for tax evasion. Reading the signs, the family moved back into exile in Britain.
Samak Sundaravej has proved surprisingly skilful in handling the challenge from the PAD, despite a series of verbal gaffes early on in his term.
He has built a close relationship with the military, in particular with army commander General Anupong Paochinda and General Prayuth Chanocha, the commander of the crucial First Amy Division, based in Bangkok.
The support of these two men would be crucial for any military challenge to the government.
In addition, both are known as staunchly loyal to the monarchy, helping burnish Mr Samak's own royalist credentials. Mr Samak has listened to the police, the army, and most importantly, the king, and handled the protests with restraint.
By contrast the PAD now appears to have overplayed its hand. Mr Sondhi and Mr Chamlong have both called this a last-ditch attempt to overthrow the government, and their actions smack of desperation. Many Thais who once sympathised with the PAD have now turned against it.
The atmosphere in Bangkok, though, remains charged and volatile. The PAD is well-funded, and is believed to have support in some very high circles, including factions of the military.
The rifts which opened up at the start of this decade, when Thaksin Shinawatra worked out how to win unbeatable parliamentary majorities, and then used them to drive through his ambitious and controversial policies, are still wide open.
