As Gambari flies off to impart news of his discussion in Burma to Ban Ki Moon and the UN Security Council, we wonder what he has achieved. He arrived in a flurry of typical junta petulance denouncing the resident UN diplomat Charles Petrie, who was only speaking the truth; but an uncomfortable truth for the junta, that the poverty and suffering, the protests and hatred of the regime are due to the SPDC’s incompetence and corruption.

What reports came out during this latest visit indicated that Gambari wasn’t allowed to meet with Than Shwe; but he did meet with several other members of the SPDC; Prime Minister Thein Sein, FM Nyan Win, Labour Minister and DASSK ‘go-between’ Aung Kyi, members of the USDA, the Myanmar Women’s Affairs Federation (MWAF), Myanmar Maternal and Child Welfare Association (MMCWA) and Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (MFCCI). He also managed to gain “meetings with officials of Myanmar Red Cross Society and representatives of national races from Kachin, Kayah, Kayin, Chin, Mon, Rakhine and Shan states”. All of these were for the purpose of bombarding Gambari with SPDC propaganda and enacting the junta’s agenda of trying to tell Gambari and the the UN what it should be doing.

Perhaps Gambari’s strongest dose of ‘clarification’ came from Than Shwe’s lapdog, the propaganda minister Kyaw Hsan; accusing the UN of bowing to US whims in trying to ‘interfere’ in other countries, and that Gambari’s mission should not to try and change the SPDC, but to go back and change the rest of the world regarding sanctions and their attitude to the junta’s road-map.

As we all know, that while the US has been using their diplomatic efforts at the UNSC to bring stronger action and stronger condemnation of the junta, these efforts have been rebuffed by the veto action of China and Russia. Far from being a tool of the US, the UNSC is held to ransom by China and Russia; the UNSC can only act in ways that they allow and not as a proxy for the US.

The words on sanctions are interesting since currently the UN has not taken any on sanctions, although some countries have done so independently. Recent pronouncements by Tay Za, the pro-junta so-called tycoon, about sanctions not having an effect on him or the generals, along with a tirade from His Master’s Voice (Kyaw Hsan) indicate that far from being ineffective, the current level of sanctions are beginning to hit the junta; otherwise, they wouldn’t bother to mention them or include them in the lists of conditions in DASSK for discussions with the SPDC. We can hope that this is not lost on the UN and that diplomatic efforts are put in place to increase the pressure on the junta with sanctions if they fail to move in the direction that the UN and ASEAN are leading them.

At the end of his visit Gambari did manage to meet with members of the NLD and with DASSK – during which time he brought out a message which we will all have read over the last few days. This is indeed light at the end of the tunnel. But of course, we don’t know how long the tunnel is and how long it is going to take to get into the light!

Nothing much appears to have happened over the last week; the junta are still in power, the troops and pro-junta thugs are still terrorising the people, pro-junta parades have been organised around the country to signify the junta view (attend it or else you will lose your job or even go to jail), the same road-map is still on the table – but the fact that meetings with opposition parties have taken place, and will continue to take place gives us hope that the long slow road to freedom is gradually being trodden by the all too-reluctant generals – a new road along the path that the people and all concerned “political organizations and forces … in particular those of our ethnic nationality races” want to walk. Keeping the transition in the public eye and in the news we can watch for any deviation by the junta back to the old ‘road-map’, the road to ruin.