The Woohoo! Report

TALLINN (AFP) — In times of economic woe, Estonians are banking on ideas to lift their spirits above the gloom and doom of recession with an online “happiness bank” and forums on better governance.

“The main aim of the project… is to use modern technology to create a ‘democracy machine’ that will help increase understanding among people, bring the state closer to citizens and force people to become actively involved in improving their lives instead of passively hoping that someone else will do it,” Estonian Internet entrepreneur Rainer Nolvak, one of the main organizers of the project, told AFP.

In the virtual “happiness bank”, people will be able to earn virtual money on their accounts by doing good deeds for those in need. Organisers hope it will give people the idea that doing good is as valuable as earning money.

“We think that especially when the entire world is facing recession we need a lot of thinking also at the grass-roots level to figure what we all can do to fight recession and make life better,” Nolvak added.

Organisers hope that as many as 100,000 Estonians in the tiny 1.3-million-strong Baltic EU state will attend 400-1000 public ‘brain-storming’ forums across Estonia on better governance that will also be streamed live via the net on May 1.

Registration for the project is currently underway.

“The topics of the forums will tackle the most important problems at both local and national level. All forum group heads must select the topics from our website www.minueesti.ee (my Estonia) by April 20, 2009,” Anneli Ohvril, head of the Communications Team for the “Let’s do it – let’s think” project, told AFP.

“The forum participants will select best practice ideas that they will then start to implement,” Ohvril says.

Organisers expect to get at least one thousand ideas for best practices that can be applied in everyday life. Later in December, people will be asked to vote on all the local and national best ideas to select the ones they support the most.

Nolvak says the success of a massive Internet-based national garbage collection campaign last year sparked the idea for the ‘democracy machine’ and ‘happiness bank’.

“We started preparations last autumn, encouraged by the massive turnout last spring when we called people to clean up garbage across Estonia,” Nolvak said.

“The success of that campaign proved to us that people are ready to commit themselves for their country.”

The one day “Let’s do it – let’s clean Estonia” campaign on May 3, 2008 saw 50,000 volunteers turn out to collect 10,000 tonnes of illegally dumped garbage.

The campaign organisers used special software based on Google Earth, positioning software for mobile phones and mobile phones with GPS to map and photograph 11,000 illegal garbage dumps across all 45,227 square kilometers of Estonia.

The organisers also hope that with the help of IT the ‘democracy machine’ campaign will help to get new people into Estonian politics where recent opinion polls show public confidence in politicians is waning.

Estonia broke free from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991 and joined the EU and NATO in 2004. It has become a powerhouse of IT innovation.

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Several monks and three members of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party were among the more than 6,300 prisoners released by Myanmar’s junta as part of a government amnesty, a party spokesman and a rights group said Sunday.

Among those freed from prisons around the country beginning Saturday was Zaw Myint Maung, a lawmaker who was serving a 20-year sentence and had been in prison since 1991, National League for Democracy spokesman Nyan Win said.

Two other township committee leaders from the NLD — Pe Thein and Thet Wai — also were released.

The three were among 19 political prisoners scheduled to be released, according to Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Thailand-based rights group whose information has proven accurate in the past. Most of the 16 remaining prisoners were monks detained in 2003 after rejecting a donation to their monastery from former junta member Gen. Khin Nyunt.

“This is just for show,” said Tate Naing, the group’s secretary. “This group does not include any policy makers or other key players.”

Nyan Win said he was expecting to hear Sunday about additional NLD members freed.

State radio and television announced Friday that 6,313 prisoners were released in recognition of their good conduct and so they would be able to participate in a general election planned for next year.

In recent months, the junta’s courts have sentenced more than 100 dissidents, including some of the country’s most prominent activists, to prison terms that would keep them incarcerated well past the 2010 polls. The junta says the vote will restore democracy, but critics say it will be a sham to keep the military in control.

Human rights groups estimate the regime holds more than 2,100 political detainees, including Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention without trial.

When the junta freed 9,002 prisoners last September, only about a dozen were political detainees.

Myanmar, which has been under military rule since 1962, is shunned by Western nations because of its poor human rights record. The ruling generals came to power in 1988 after crushing a pro-democracy uprising and killing as many as 3,000 people.

The junta called elections in 1990 but refused to honor the results when Suu Kyi’s party won overwhelmingly.

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