Word: burma
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...town I will not name lest I get him in trouble, confided that he and his friends had organized a study group to debate the merits of electoral politics. (One of the participants also runs a free class called "The Secrets of Gmail: a Pre-Advanced Course.") In northern Burma, where minorities recall that ethnic-based parties came in second and third in the 1990 polls - the army's party finished fourth - former insurgent groups often bogged down by infighting are now considering electoral alliances. A strategic show of unity could easily fracture into shards of self-interest, particularly...
Sometimes the tea was bitter. Other times it was cloyingly sweet with condensed milk. But the whispered questions at teahouses across Burma were always delivered the same way. Head flick to the right, head flick to the left. A nervous glance backward. No one listening, not even the waiter shuffling up to slosh hot water into our glass tumblers? Good. What did I, as an American who had the good fortune to vote in one of the most exciting presidential races in recent memory, think of Burma's upcoming national elections...
...decades after ignoring the results of Burma's last polls, the country's long-ruling junta has promised another electoral exercise next year, most likely by springtime. Few doubt that the generals' henchmen will stuff ballot boxes to try to ensure that the opposition doesn't prevail like it did back in 1990, when the National League for Democracy (NLD) crushed the military's proxy party. (In a troubling portent, official approval of last May's constitutional referendum was tabulated at a credulity-straining 92.4%.) But the query put to me recently in the nation's teahouses...
...less important than what Burmese living under one of the world's most Orwellian regimes thought. And what they said surprised me. Yes, some deemed the elections "useless." Others conceded that the obstacles to even a semblance of electoral freedom are formidable. Before a single vote is cast, Burma's elections will be rigged. The newly minted constitution ensures that top leadership posts are reserved for the military, which, above all, appears to be motivated by self-preservation. Many members of the political opposition - including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who still languishes under house arrest - have...
...Kennedy: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Sitting between us was a shy young man who practiced this new English sentence over and over, savoring Kennedy's rhetorical flourish. The words took on a strange quality in Burma, a place where people don't expect their country to do much of anything for them. But the young student was willing to take up the challenge of the other half of Kennedy's equation. "It's my responsibility to my country to teach people about the elections," he said. "People...