This year, in addition to the actual Persons of the Year, there are a few others who got quite a large number of votes, enough to be runners-up.

POY Runners-up

1. U Win Tin : Formerly the right-hand man of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi before his imprisonment and her detention.

• He was one of the founding members, along with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, of Burma’s main pro-democracy party National League for Democracy NLD.
• Before his recent release from prison, he was the longest serving political prisoner in Burma.
• Despite his long and harse jail-term, he never gave up his faith in democracy.
• His sentence was extended because he reported about the inhumane situations inside prisons to the investgators from the United Nations.
• He is now trying his best to revive and re-energize the National League for Democracy NLD inside Burma.
• He is trying to restore solidarity and harmony between older and newer generations of activists inside Burma and inside NLD.
• And he is trying to rebuild the rapport between the party and the people inside Burma.
• If fruits bear from his good efforts, he may next year become the POY 2009.

2. U Maung Maung : Gerneral Secretary of National Council of Union of Burma NCUB; General Secretary of Federation of Trade Unions Burma FTUB

• He is a very skillful politician.
• He initiated and organized this year an attempt by some exile pro-democracy groups to challenge military regime’s credentials at the UN General Assembly.
• Although the attempts to challeng credibility of the regime failed as the UN refused to consider the request, a lot of exile activists hold the view that at least U Maung Maung is trying to do something, while other leading politicians seem to have lost their plot in 2008.
• But his critics say that the ‘credential challenge’ attempt was an inappropriate isssue raised at a wrong time, and that it unnecessarily caused a split among exile leadership.

3. Voluntary aid-workers during Cyclone Nargis Crisis

• Cyclone Nargis caught evrybody off guard.
• The people in the Irrawaddy Delta never experienced such a ultra-deadly storm before. The military government has never prepared for such an immense diasater, and they lack the will and logistics to quickly and efficiently carry out emergency rescue and aid missions.
• The opposition parties have the will to help the people but they had a lack of ways and means
• The international community could not promptly enough establish channels to effectively deliver emrgency aid into the disaster region.
• While the international donors and the military regime were just squabbling over the issue of who will  suprevise the aid delivery, civilian well-wishers from un-affected areas of Burma showed their own initiaitves to go into the disaster region promptly and started the rescue and aid missions by themsleves using their own money, locally available food and medicine suplies etc.
• They are the faceless nameless real heroes on the ground.