MPs have been shown a video message by the democracy leader, writes Deborah Snow.
THE Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has urged Australia to maintain a close watch on her country, saying the recent election of a parliament after decades of military rule has not produced a move towards ''true'' democracy.
In a video message played for federal MPs in Canberra this week, the recently released leader said: ''We have not seen any positive, definite move towards a truly democratic process''.
She cites as core concerns the failure to free the country's 2000 political prisoners and tight constraints on the new parliament. ''I particularly appeal to elected members of parliament, not just in Australia or Asia, but all over the world to look very carefully at how the elections of [November] 2010 were conducted, and what the elected members of the national assembly are allowed to do.''
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Ms Suu Kyi has chosen her words carefully, given she is is not long out of 15 years of house arrest, and wants to minimise direct confrontation with the still-powerful generals. The message was recorded to mark 100 days of the Burmese parliament, which convened in January after the military orchestrated the first elections in 20 years.
Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy boycotted the poll, which was engineered to give the army control of more than 80 per cent of the seats.
The military's ruling organ, the State Peace and Development Council, dissolved itself at the end of March but seasoned Burma observers say the same people remain in charge behind the parliamentary facade.
''The old Senior General Than Shwe still calls the shots even though he holds almost no official position at all,'' says a Macquarie University academic, Sean Turnell, who visited the country less than a month ago. 'The message from just about everyone I spoke to is that … the military are still in charge.''
Associate Professor Turnell, a world expert on the Burmese economy, says the defence apparatus will consume more than half of the national budget this year, and that more than 90 per cent of Burma's revenues from natural gas - some 2 to 3 billion dollars a year - will go into a slush fund controlled by the army.
The Indonesian MP and current head of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus, Eva Sundari, was also in Canberra this week underscoring warnings about how little has changed in Burma. She says her group is campaigning against Burma taking chairmanship of ASEAN in 2014.
Tensions remain along the Thai-Burma border, where some 140,000 Burmese live in refugee camps after fleeing crackdowns on ethnic minorities by the Burmese military.
A further 87,000 Burmese have taken refuge in Malaysia, where they live in the shadows among the populace, with no right to work (though many do illegally for pitiful wages) and no right for their children to attend schools.
It is from this group that Australia will draw many of the 4000 refugees it has agreed to take from Malaysia in return for 800 irregular boat arrivals it will send to Kuala Lumpur.
The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, unveiled the controversial swap this week as part of Canberra's increasingly desperate plan for a '' regional solution'' to stop the boats, hoping that those contemplating the journey would be deterred by the risk they will end up in Malaysia not Australia.
Many Burmese refugees living in Malaysia are from ethnic groups in revolt against Rangoon.
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