Cardinal Charles Bo ကတိၚဆူဥထီဥတႈ ဘဥဃးဒီးတႈပဏဖ်ါထီဥတႈအဲဥဒီး တႈခ်ဳးလ႕တႈဃုထ႕ထီဥလ႕ ထံကီႈအပူၚ တဟဲတုၚ၀ဲအကတီႈ တႈကစီႈ

Cardinal Charles Bo ကတိၚဆူဥထီဥတႈ ဘဥဃးဒီးတႈပဏဖ်ါထီဥတႈအဲဥဒီး တႈခ်ဳးလ႕တႈဃုထ႕ထီဥလ႕ ထံကီႈအပူၚ တဟဲတုၚ၀ဲအကတီႈ တႈကစီႈ

ဖဲလ႕အလံဏပရ႕ ဘိးဘဥသ့ဥညါတႈအပူၚ Cardinal Charles Bo အိဥ၀ဲဒီးတႈသူဥတမုဏသးတမုဏ ဘဥဃးဒီးပွၚ Buddha ဖိအသီခါဒီးဖံ၀ါသ့ဥတဖဥယ ကဲးသလံးအသီခါဒီးဖံ၀ါသ့ဥတဖဥယ ခရံဏဖိကရူႈအလီၚဆီ၀ဲအကရ႕ဖိသ့ဥတဖဥယ ပွၚ Muslim ဖိတႈဘူဥတႈဘါခိဥနဥသ့ဥတဖဥ ဘဥတႈႀတီဃဥအီၚ ဒ္သိးအသုတပဏဖ်ါထီဥတႈအိဥလ႕အသးပူၚ (လ႕အဲကလံးအက်ိဏပစံးလ႕ Voting) အဂီႈနဥ့လီၚ’

တႈပဏဖ်ါထီဥတႈအဲဥဒိး မ့ႈမူဒါလ႕အစီဆွံ၀ဲ Voting, a “Sacred duty”

ဒ္ဎမ့ႈဎဲ Cardinal တဂၚအသိးယ ဎသ့ဥပဏဖ်ါထီဥဎဲ ဎတႈစံးတႈကတိၚ ဒီးသ့ဟ့ဥဂံႈဟ့ဥဘါဎဲ ထံဖိကီႈဖိသ့ဥတဖဥ ဒ္သိးအကပဏဖ်ါထီဥအတႈအဲဥဒီးနဥ့လီၚ’ Cardinal Charles Bo စံး၀ဲဒ္နဥ့ဘဥဆဥ ပဏဖ်ါထီဥ၀ဲလ႕ အနီႈကစႈဒဥ၀ဲ တသ့ပဏဖ်ါထီဥတႈအိဥလ႕အသးပူၚဘဥနဥ့လီၚ’ အအံၚမ့ႈ၀ဲတႈသုးတႈက်ဲးလ႕ အလီၚတိဏလီၚဆီ၀ဲတမံၚအဂ့ႈ Cardinal စံး၀ဲနဥ့လီၚ’ Cardinal Charles Bo အတႈပဏဖ်ါထီဥတႈယ မ့ႈတႈလ႕အဘဥဃးဒီးတႈဃုထ႕ထီဥလ႕ထံကီႈအပူၚယ ဒ္အကမ့ႈ၀ဲဖဲ ၂၀၂၀ အနံဥအံၚအပူၚယ ဒ္ထံကီႈအံၚအတႈပ႕တႈၿပးအက့ႈအဂီၚ အိဥ၀ဲလ႕တႈလဲလိဏကြံဏအသးအက်ဲဖီခိဥ ဖဲသုးပဒိဥအတႈပ႕တႈၿပး အနံဥအဆံသ့ဥတဖဥ လဲၚပူၚကြံဏ၀ံၚအလီႈခံနဥ့လီၚ’ စံး၀ဲလ႕”တႈပဏဖ်ါထီဥတႈအဲဥဒိး မ့ႈမူဒါလ႕အစီဆွံ၀ဲ ဒီးမ့ႈ၀ဲပွၚကညီသ့ဥတဖဥ အတႈလဲၚက်ဲလ႕အစီဆွံ၀ဲအသိးယ ကတိၚပလီႈတႈဒီးစံး၀ဲ ပွၚလ႕အတကနဏဃုဏတႈ ဒီးပဏပူၚအသးလ႕ တႈပဏဖ်ါထီဥတႈအဲဥဒိးအခါ မ့ႈ၀ဲပကစႈဒဥ၀ဲ ပတႈက်ဲးစ႕ၚဃုထံဥနဥ့တႈအ႕တႈသီသ့ဥတဖဥနဥ့လီၚ’ လ႕ကီႈပဎီၚစ႕ဖွိဥထံဖိကီႈဖိသ့ဥတဖဥအဂီႈယ တႈပဏဖ်ါထီဥတႈအိဥလ႕ပသးပူၚ မ့ႈတႈလ႕အစီဆွံ၀ဲတမံၚ ဒ္သိးပကသ့မၚဒိဥမၚဆူဥထီဥ ပွၚကညီအသူးအသ့ဥ ဒီးတႈနဥ့ဘ်ဳးနဥ့ဖွိဥလ႕ပွၚခဲလ႕ဏအဂီႈအဂ့ႈ စံး၀ဲနဥ့လီၚ’ Cardinal Charles Bo, မ့ႈစ့ႈကီး၀ဲ ကီႈမိႈပွႈအ့ရွ႕ဥသီခါကရ႕ခိဥသ့ဥတဖဥ အကရ႕ကရိအခိဥအနဥစံး၀ဲယ ဒ္အမ့ႈ၀ဲတႈဘူဥတႈဘါခိဥနဥတဂၚအသိး တႈပဏဖ်ါထီဥခိဥနဥမတၚမတၚယ Party ဖဲလဲဥတခါ ပွၚကဘဥဆီဥထြဲအီၚအဂီႈ မူဒါတအိဥဒီးအီၚဘဥအဂ့ႈ စံး၀ဲနဥ့လီၚ’ ဘဥဆဥယ ဒ္ထံကီႈအံၚ အိဥလ႕ပွဲၚ၀ဲဒီးတႈဘူဥတႈဘါအလုဥအလဏယ မ့ႈထံကီႈလ႕ တႈဘူဥတႈဘါခိဥနဥသ့ဥတဖဥ မၚတႈဒ္ပွၚထုးစုနဲဥက်ဲတႈလ႕ သကဲးပ၀ဏအဂီႈအသိးယ မူဒါအိဥ၀ဲဒီးတႈဘူဥတႈဘါခိဥနဥ ကိးဂၚဒဲးယ ဒ္သိးအကဟ့ဥဂံႈဟ့ဥဘါ၀ဲ ထံဖိကီႈဖိသ့ဥတဖဥ ဒ္သိးအကပဏဖ်ါထီဥ တႈဘဥအသးလ႕ ခိဥနဥမတၚမတၚယ Party ဖဲလဲဥတခါခါယ ဒ္သိးအကမ့ႈ၀ဲလ႕ အအိဥ၀ဲဒီးတႈလုႈတႈပွၚ့အဖီခိဥနဥ့လီၚ’

တႈကဟုကဎဏ ဒံဥမိႈခရ့ဥစံဥ ( Defending Democracy)

Cardinal လ႕အသးအိဥလံ ၇၁ နံဥတဂၚအံၚစံး၀ဲယ ဖဲ ၂၀၁၀ အနံဥ ကီႈပဎီၚစ႕ဖွိဥအတႈအိဥအသး စးထီဥအသးဆူ ဒံဥမိဥခရ့ဥစံဥ အတႈပ႕တႈၿပးအသိးယ တႈစိတႈကမီၚ က့ၚကဒါက့ၚ၀ဲဆူ ပွၚကမ်႕ဥဖိသ့ဥတဖဥအအိဥ ဖဲနံဥအဆံသ့ဥတဖဥပူၚကြံဏ၀ံၚအလီႈခံနဥ့လီၚ’ ဖဲအပူၚကြံဏ ၅ နံဥအတီႈပူၚ တႈကဲထီဥအသး မ့ႈတႈလ႕ အက်ဲႈက်ီလိဏအသးဒီး တႈမၚအသး တလီၚတံဥလီၚဆဲးဒ္၀ဲဘဥဆဥယ ထံဖိကီႈဖိသ့ဥတဖဥအိဥ၀ဲဒီးတႈသူဥဆူဥသးဂဲၚ ဒ္သိးအကပဏဖ်ါထီဥတႈဘဥအသး မ့ႈတႈလ႕အဘဥဃးဒီးတႈသဥ၀ံၚအသးလ႕ ဒံဥမိဥခရ့ဥစံဥအတႈပ႕အဂီႈယ ဒီးလ႕တႈသူဥစူၚသးစူၚအပူၚ ပွၚကမ်႕ဥဖိသ့ဥတဖဥ ကဘဥအိဥ၀ဲဒီး တႈစူဥတႈနဏ တႈသနၚ့သးလ႕ ဒံဥမိဥခရ့ဥစံဥအတႈပ႕အပူၚ ခီဖ်ိတႈမၚဃုဏတႈ ဂ့ၚဂ့ၚဘဥဘဥ လီၚတံဥလီၚဆဲး ဖဲလ႕တႈဃုထ႕ထီဥလ႕အကဟဲတုၚ၀ဲတဘ်ီအံၚ အဂီႈအဂ့ႈ Cardinal စံး၀ဲနဥ့လီၚ’

Cardinal Charles Bo မ႕နဥ့ဆီဥခံတႈ ဒ္သိးပွၚကကဟုကဎဏ ထံကီႈအ Democracy အတႈပ႕တႈၿပးယ ဒီးစံး၀ဲလ႕ တႈပ႕တႈၿပးအံၚ ဟဲတုၚအိဥပွၚ မ့ႈလ႕ပိဏမုႈပိဏခြါအါဒံအါဂၚသ့ဥတဖဥ ဘဥဘ်႕လီၚ၀ဲအတႈတူဥဆါအသးယ ခီဖ်ိတႈဂဏသြံဥဂဏစီဥအဃိယ ဒ္သိးတႈသဘ့် ကအိဥဂ႕ႈဆိးက်႕ၚ၀ဲအဂီႈနဥ့လီၚ’

ပွၚကညီအသူးအသ့ဥဒီး အတႈခြဲးတႈဎဏ (Human dignity and rights)

ဒံဥမိဥခရ့ဥစံဥ ဘဥတႈသူဥထီဥအီၚလ႕ ပွၚကညီအသူးအသ့ဥအဖီခိဥယ ဒီးဘဥတႈမၚဆူဥထီဥအီၚလ႕ တႈမၚဒိဥထီဥထီထီဥဒီး ကဟုကဎဏပွၚကညီခြဲးဎဏယ ဒ္အမ့ႈယ သးသမူအတႈခြဲးတႈဎဏယ တႈဖံးအီဥမၚအီဥအတႈခြဲးတႈဎဏယ တႈကူဥဘဥကူဥသ့အတႈခြဲးတႈဎဏယ တႈဘူဥတႈဘါယ တႈစံးတႈကတိၚယ တဟံးနဥ့ပ႕ဘဥဟီဥခိဥ တႈလီႈတႈက်ဲ အတႈခြဲးတႈဎဏသ့ဥတဖဥနဥ့လီၚ’

တႈလ႕ပွၚကဘဥခီဥဆ႕အီၚ (Challenges)

ထံကီႈဘဥခီဥဆ႕တႈအိဥ၀ဲအါမံၚအါမေိယ ဒ္ထံကီႈအံၚ ဘဥဒိဆါလံ၀ဲ ဖဲအပူၚကြံဏအနံဥ ၆၀ အတီႈပူၚ မ့ႈလ႕တႈဒုးတႈဎၚအိဥတ့ႈလံ၀ဲယ မ့ႈလ႕တႈသူဥဟ့သးဟ့လိဏသးတဂၚဒီးတဂၚအဃိယ ဒီးမ့ႈလ႕ပွၚအကထိဒီးအကထိသ့ဥတဖဥ အလီႈအက်ဲတအိဥလ႕ၚ၀ဲ လ႕အထံလီႈကီႈပူၚဒဥ၀ဲအဃိအဂ့ႈ Cardinal စံး၀ဲနဥ့လီၚ’

မၚကညီအတႈလဲၚထီဥလဲၚထီ မ့ႈ၀ဲတႈကတိၚအဂၚတထံဥ လ႕တႈတီတႈလိၚအဂီႈယ ဒီးဒုးသ့ဥနီဥထီဥ၀ဲ ခိဥနဥသ့ဥတဖဥလ႕ ပွၚကမ်႕ဥဖိအမ်းကဎၚ ၆၀ သ့ဥတဖဥ မ့ႈပွၚလ႕အသးစႈနဥ့ ၄၀ယ ဒီးပွၚသ့ဥတဖဥအံၚ မ့ႈဒိးနဥ့ဘဥတႈခြဲးတႈဎဏဒီး တႈဖံးတႈမၚသ့ဥတဖဥဒီး သ့ဒုးအိဥထီဥ၀ဲတႈလီၚလိဏလီၚလးအဂ့ႈယ ထံကီႈအပွၚသူဥဘီဥသးစႈ လြံဥကကြဲဥဃဥဃဥသဥတဖဥ ဘဥအိဥ၀ဲလ႕ တႈမ႕ကဲကုႈအက့ႈအဂီၚလ႕ခ့ခါခဲအံၚ လ႕အဘူးအတံဥထံကီႈသ့ဥတဖဥအပူၚယ ဒီးလိဏဘဥ၀ဲလ႕ ကဟဲက့ၚတုၚ၀ဲဆူ အထံလီႈကီႈပူၚအဂ့ႈ Cardinal စံး၀ဲနဥ့လီၚ’

မ့ႈလ႕တႈဂ့ႈအံၚအဃိ မ႕နဥ့ဆီဥခံ၀ဲ တႈကူဥဘဥကူဥသ့လ႕အပတီႈထီ၀ဲ ဒီးတႈခြဲးတႈဎဏလ႕ သူဥဘီဥသးစႈသ့ဥတဖဥအဂီႈနဥ့လီၚ’

ကတိၚဆူဥထီဥတႈဒီးစံး၀ဲလ႕ တႈမုဏတႈခုဥ မ့ႈ၀ဲက်ဲထဲတဘိဧိၚယ ဒီးတႈမုဏတႈခုဥ မ့ႈတႈလ႕ပွၚမၚနဥ့အီၚသ့၀ဲ ဘဥဆဥ တႈတီတႈလိၚမ့ႈတအိဥ ပွၚမၚနဥ့အီၚတသ့၀ဲအဂ့ႈ Cardinal စံး၀ဲနဥ့လီၚ’ စံးကဒီး၀ဲ” ပွၚလ႕အက်ဲးစ႕ၚမၚနဥ့၀ဲ တႈမုဏတႈခုဥ အိဥသူဥလီၚအသးလ႕ တႈတီတႈလိၚအဖီခိဥ လ႕အမၚလီၚမဏကြံဏ တႈဆီဥသနံးလိဏသးခဲလ႕ဏသ့ဥတဖဥ ကမ့ႈ၀ဲတႈဖံးတႈမၚတႈလ႕ ထံကီႈအတႈနဥ့ဘ်ဳးနဥ့ဖွိဥ လ႕တႈစံဏစိၚတဲစိၚအပူၚအဂ့ႈ Cardinal Charles Bo ပဏဖ်ါထီဥ၀ဲလ႕ အတႈဘိးဘဥသ့ဥညါတႈအပူၚနဥ့လီၚ’

Statement by Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, on the forthcoming Elections

 The Right to vote for me and  The Sacred Pilgrimage of  Election

 Myanmar gets ready for another election later this year.   For politicians this may be another election.  For the people of Myanmar this is a sacred pilgrimage in this golden land to strengthen their human dignity and common good.

 There is one specific concern which I wish to address and in so doing appeal to the government of Myanmar to change. The Constitution of Myanmar, in Article 392 (a), prohibits members of religious orders from voting. In other words, Buddhist monks and nuns, Catholic priests and religious, other Christian clergy, Muslim clerics and others are denied the right to vote. As Cardinal I can make statements and speeches and encourage citizens to vote, but I am myself barred from voting. This is an extremely unusual arrangement. I am not aware of any other democracy in which this is a requirement.

We religious leaders are also citizens of Myanmar. I therefore appeal to the government, as it considers reforms to the Constitution, to eliminate this provision in Article 392 (a).

As a religious leader, identifying parties or leaders to support is not my duty.   But as a country soaked in a great religious tradition and where religious leaders serve as moral guides, it is the duty of every religious leader  to encourage all citizen to vote for the leader  and party of their  choice - based on values.  Voting is a sacred duty.  It is a sacred pilgrimage of human dignity.  Those who shirk this sacred responsibility do at their own peril.

Democracy is a process in our country.  After long decades, the transition to democracy in 2010 saw the power returning to people.   Enthusiastic participation of our people in elections, candidly showed our hunger for a robust democracy. The last five years brought mixed results. With patience,  people of Myanmar need to invest their faith in democracy through vigorous participation in the next election.

What values we expect from the contesting parties?    Democracy came to this country at a great personal price of many gallant men and women.   The founding fathers of this nation shed their blood to ensure our freedom.  All these sacrifices need to be acknowledged through  electing candidates who would fulfill the great dreams of our martyrs. 

What values for which those magnanimous men and women died for?

 Democracy is a sacrosanct principle built on the holy land of human dignity, articulated in the promotion and protection of human rights – right to life, right to livelihood, right to education, right to religion, right to language, right to land etc. The option for the poorest and most vulnerable is welded into the human rights discourse.  Human dignity from womb to tomb was their dream and our dream too.  

For the international community, our nation looks as a wounded nation. Wounded by decades of war, mutilated by mutual hatred.   Though this assumption may not be true, we need to accept chronic wars for 60 years and thousands of refugees inside the country is a sad fact.   Peace is the only way, peace is possible. There is no peace without justice.   Those who will bring enduring peace based on justice removing all discriminations  would be doing historic good to this nation.  

 Sixty percent of our population is below the age of 40, a very productive generation who can work wonders if given opportunities.   Human development is the new name for Justice.   Quality education and opportunities are biggest challenges to this country.   Those leaders who can invest in human capital will be promoting common good of this nation and also help in bringing back nearly 4 million of Myanmar youth who are in modern forms of slavery in nearby countries.

Peace, reconciliation, harmony among communities, non-discrimination, human development and health are some of our urgent needs.  Citizens need to identify parties and individuals who actively support the realization of these needs.

They deserve your most valuable votes. 

Vote not for a party or an individual.  Vote for a peaceful, prosperous Myanmar of tomorrow.   We are a blessed  nation, God has blessed this country with abundant resources below and above the ground. Let the elections start the process of equal distribution of all these resources.  We can have the golden land.

As preparations for the elections unfold and as in due course the campaign begins, I offer my prayers for our country, in the hope that these elections will be conducted in a way that is peaceful, respectful, democratic, free and fair and that takes our country forward towards peace and human rights for everyone, of every ethnicity and religion in Myanmar.  A new Myanmar  of peace and prosperity to all is possible. 

Let our pilgrimage to that great dream start with our discerned voting.

May God bless you all.

Cardinal Charles Maung Bo., SDB

Archbishop of Yangon, Myanmar.

President of Federation of Asia Bishops’ Conferences