After days of speculation about an impending coup, Myanmar’s military has formally seized power the very day a newly elected parliament was scheduled to meet for the first time. Military generals ruled the country from the early 1960s until 2011. Now they are taking back control, after a near-decade of sharing power with elected lawmakers.
Political Veto by Coup
The coup began in the early hours of February 1. The military detained senior politicians from Myanmar’s largest political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint. Soon after, the military declared a state of emergency, alleging unproven claims of voter fraud in the November 2020 elections, which the NLD won by a larger landslide than it had in 2015. The declaration invokes emergency clauses in the Constitution to supposedly preserve stability. Power has been formally transferred to the military’s top general, Min Aung Hlaing, with a pledge to hold elections within a year. So far, there are no reports of violence, although the military is deploying in main cities like Yangon and Naypyidaw.
The Stakes of Myanmar’s Political Future
For months, the military has disputed the election results by touting widespread voter fraud without proof. The national election commission rejected their allegations due to a lack of evidence. Undeterred, the military pressed on with its claims, calling on the NLD to delay seating the new parliament until the election results could be reviewed. Last week, negotiations with NLD leaders broke down when they refused to meet the military’s demands for postponement, setting the stage for a head-on confrontation.
The coup ends a decade of limited democratic reforms in Myanmar, which came after almost half a century of repressive military rule. The military itself had launched these reforms in 2011, by setting up a power-sharing arrangement with elected leaders like Aung San Suu Kyi.
While initiating limited democratic reforms, the military did all it could to keep the deck stacked in its own favor. Before letting the highly popular NLD compete in the 2015 elections, the military built in constitutional safeguards to guarantee its continued political dominance. The 2008 Constitution, currently in effect, reserves a quarter of the seats in the parliament for the military, giving it an effective veto over any constitutional amendments. It bans Aung San Suu Kyi from becoming president on account of her foreign-born children. Furthermore, it gives the military the right to dismiss parliament to preserve national stability, a power that the generals are now abusing to dismiss a democratically elected government on trumped-up charges of election fraud.
Why Now?
Why did the military disrupt a system that has preserved its supremacy in political decisionmaking for nearly a decade? The military’s choice to intervene appears to be more about future vulnerability than a present policy standoff with the NLD. While relations between the two sides have been tense, the NLD has been largely nonconfrontational. It has managed to walk the tightrope by letting the military keep its dominance over security affairs. In fact, many observers have criticized Aung San Suu Kyi for appeasing the military on human rights issues, especially in defending its mass atrocities against the stateless Rohingya people.
Ironically, the seeds of the current dispute may have been sown by NLD’s symbolic moves to seek reform rather than escalating resistance to military dominance. In March 2020, the NLD introduced constitutional amendments meant to take aim at the military’s constitutional safeguards to remain a major political player. The attempt was bound to fail from the beginning, given the military’s veto power in parliament. However, the NLD used the largely symbolic move to signal its commitment to further reforms ahead of the November elections.
Nonetheless, even this doomed attempt to contest the military’s sway signaled the generals’ future vulnerability. First, the move sparked public discussion about an issue that the military leadership considered settled and beyond debate. Second, it rallied support from some non-NLD parliamentarians from smaller parties, indicating a broader appetite for reform. Third, the move proved highly popular and helped the NLD increase its share of the parliament’s elected seats from 79 percent to 83 percent, excluding the 25 percent reserved for the military.
Why did the military take such drastic action now? The generals may have sought to hit the reset button due to concerns about the staying power of constitutional safeguards for military dominance, given the NLD’s increasing popularity. The next few months will show how the military seeks to renegotiate its political role.
Anticipating the Public Response
The military may not be able to act with as much impunity as it has before. While the generals have sought to shroud their intervention in a 2008 constitution they wrote for their own protection, a large majority of the population is likely to condemn the detention of senior civilian leaders. There is a high likelihood of mass protests against the coup: NLD leaders, especially Aung San Suu Kyi, remain hugely popular as their electoral success shows. So far, the NLD has called for nonviolent protests. Pro-democracy activists, students, and religious leaders have proven highly adept at mobilizing against past military repression. They will likely do so again to protect the hard-earned freedoms they have enjoyed for the past five years. The rapid penetration of mobile phones and increased prevalence of social media usage over the past decade might aid in their efforts.
The military seems pointedly aware of these risks to its grip on power. At least, that seems to be true given the detentions of civilian leaders, heavy deployments of security forces in major cities to prevent gatherings, and internet and phone service blackouts across the country. How far the generals may go to repress civilians’ dissent this time around is hard to say. On the one hand, increased media presence in the country and concerns about civil unrest from major investment partners may limit the military’s ability to use heavy-handed repression as it did in the past. On the other hand, these constraints on use of direct force may incentivize the deployment of militia proxies to suppress protests for plausible deniability.
The International Reaction
While domestic factors are likely to influence the military’s calculations, Western condemnation or threats of sanctions are less likely to have an impact. Meanwhile, the reactions from Myanmar’s neighbors have been mixed and cautious. Myanmar’s two largest democratic partners in Asia, India and Indonesia, have issued a muted response, expressing concern and urging all sides to avoid violence and find democratic solutions. ASEAN is split as usual—with Thailand and Cambodia saying it is an “internal matter.” China’s response has been most interesting, seeming to undercut speculation that Myanmar’s military must have had China’s support. Rather than outright downplay the coup like Cambodia did, Beijing’s formal statement emphasizes the need to maintain social stability and resolve differences. This may mean China (Myanmar’s leading economic partner) does not welcome any resulting civil unrest that could threaten its economic interests in the country.
Comments(4)
As a longtime visitor ( 1969) & trading partner of Myanmar , I have witnessed the various sages of evolution in the country. This latest coup comes as no surprise ... we will see how the situation will evoluate - but as usual that will take time. I would take the occasion to ask the author of this article , Sana Jaffrey if she would not be prepared to develop an artical to defend Aung Suu Kyi on the accustaion of misbehaviot in the Rohingyi Case. Some extended study of the origin of this problem has made it clear to me that she is treated very badly by the international press who is neglecting the unacceptable behaviour in the distant and not so distant past. There is a vast majority in the country that do not consider the Rohingya as citizens of their country. It would be an attempt to put some things in the right proportion . This lady deserves that !
Ms.Sana Jaffrey has written a needed insightful essay on the Myanmar coup situation. As said globally by those who understand clearly the political history of the country, the coup was not a surprise; it was just a matter of time. In some interesting respects with of courses different cultural and national political contexts and dynamics,it reminds me of what happened in Zimbabwe a few years ago. Issues of governance in Africs,Asis,and the Middle East, are transforming dramatically while the West with such growing obsolete paradigms for explanations and collaborative problem solving progressively idles by. Myanmar reminds us in its elite and ordinary citizenry crisis in this long moment how much we need fresh new 21st century peacemaking strategies both internally and globally. Professor John H.Stanfield,II Director ASARPI Mauritius
Myanmar's so-called road to democracy proved to be a farce right from the beginning when the lady Aung Sang Suu Chi betrayed the love and trust bestowed on her by the international community by sharing the racist mentality of her previous tormentors.Her infamous trip to the Hague to defend the military in their persecution of the Rohingya ethnic minority proved her complicity in the crimes of the regime.So democracy in Myanmar was not simply ushered in by the release of the lady from house arrest and then sucked into the military bureaucracy.Democracy will come to Myanmar only when the rights of her different minority ethnic nationalities are institutionally recognised.
Thank you, Sana, for this piece on Myanmar. I would like to offer a view on the international reaction following the military coup. The US and a few others say they contemplate sanctions. Myanmar has been there in the past, Cambodia is there, Iraq, Russia and others have been there and -if we are again talking of economic sanctions- we continue to ignore how ineffective, unfair and counterproductive they can be. Ineffective and unfair because the suffering is endured by the mainly poor people and not those in charge and counterproductive because in South East Asia at least they only pushed the targeted countries closer to China. In some countries sanctions are in effect mostly a domestic policy tool to produce the illusion of action hiding lack of genuine engagement or geopolitical interest towards a country or region. I was never a fan of ASSK when she was an under house arrest iconic figure for so many, especially when she was recommending abstinence to fight Aids or calling for tougher sanctions against her own people. But when she accepted to carry the burden of the crippled democratic deal offered by the military, she – in my view- became a really exceptional state’s women that the so-called “international community” should have supported. Unfortunately, the long term, painstaking and unrewarding efforts that the transition to a real democracy required in such a context was not exiting enough to make breaking news, satisfy the self-proclaimed defenders of democracy or capture the interest of diplomats. In the end, the Rohingya disaster did! And who quickly became the target of most criticisms? Not the faceless Burmese army but the only person trying to give democracy a chance, ASSK herself. I am sorry to say we may have largely failed her. May we not fail again the people of Myanmar. Also I am not sure internet and social networks are such great friends of democracy.
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