The eyes of Asia and the world will be on Myanmar until the transition from the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party to Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy is completed. India is particularly interested in the outcome of her closed door meetings this week with President Thein Sein, the army commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing, and the parliamentary speaker, Shwe Mann. Myanmar could be a key player in a new Great Game involving China and India. It is also a major stepping stone in India’s Look East policy.
But the USDP and NLD both find themselves in an impossible position, thanks to a Constitution that seems specially designed to perpetuate the junta’s stranglehold on power, irrespective of the people’s verdict. If it doesn’t bend, it will break. The diplomatic finesse of the two sides will depend on finding a way of reconciling interests that are plainly contradictory. In domestic politics as in foreign affairs, Myanmar seems condemned to walk a tense tightrope.
The new members of the first democratically elected Parliament in a quarter of a century will not take their seats until February. A new president will take over only towards the end of March. It’s time now for patient and delicate negotiations to reconcile all elements to a new dispensation that must balance old and new. But the NLD spokesman, Win Htein, warns, “We don’t think the transition will be 100 per cent perfect.”
Myanmar’s revolution – no other word can describe the upsurge that gave the NLD 364 seats in both houses of Parliament in the November 8 election – was unlike any of the changes that gripped West Asian countries. This was no Arab Spring flowering under foreign benediction in the teeth of authority’s resistance as in Tunisia. Nor was the change the result of militant secessionist movements by ethnic or religious minorities like the Kurds, Shias or Sunnis of Syria and Iraq. Above all, Myanmar has experienced no terrorist violence like that launched by the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. This was a genuine political revolution launched within the parameters of the Constitution.
Ms Suu Kyi recognises that her return to active politics and the NLD’s stunning victory could not have taken place without President Thein’s far-reaching reforms since 2011. Congratulating the NLD even before the final results were released, he announced through his spokesman “We will work peacefully in the transfer (of power).” In other words, the bloody political events of 1990 when the generals arbitrarily annulled the electoral verdict, imprisoned NLD leaders and placed Ms Suu Kyi under house arrest would not be repeated. Such acceptance of change would be unthinkable in Cairo or Damascus.
Nor would any victorious opposition leader in Egypt or Syria be as careful as Ms Suu Kyi not to antagonise the existing rulers. She warned NLD cadres in her very first speech after the polls not to anger the USDP which had won only 40 seats. “I want to remind you all that even candidates who didn’t win have to accept the winners, but it is important not to provoke the candidates who didn’t win to make them feel bad,” she announced. She must be acutely aware that even if the USDP was roundly trounced, the army enjoys political and other privileges as well as 25 per cent of the seats in each House. In addition, the army chief controls three powerful ministries.
Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, 70-year-old Ms Suu Kyi was released from house arrest only five years ago. But she must have reflected as her supporters celebrated the NLD victory in the old colonial capital of Yangon, that this is not the end of the road for her. It is only the beginning. Not many septuagenarian women have to embark on a delicately balanced political experiment in which she must govern, without appearing to do so, an impoverished strife-torn nation of 51 million people that has been ruled since the 1960s by a military junta calling itself the Tatmadaw.
Ms Suu Kyi has suffered much since her fortuitous entry into politics. She was visiting Myanmar to see her dying mother (a former ambassador to India) when the revolution erupted and popular demand kept her back. Knowing she would not be allowed in again if she left Myanmar, she didn’t leave even to visit her dying husband, Michael Aris, a highly respected British orientalist who was tutor to Bhutan’s King Jigme Singye Wangchuck.
After so much uncertainty and suffering, she finds herself in a peculiarly anomalous position. She cannot be president because the Constitution debars anyone who is married to a foreigner or has children who are foreigners – a clause the junta obviously inserted to exclude her. Meeting the challenge head-on, Ms Suu Kyi repeatedly said an NLD triumph would place her “above the president”. After the election, she said the next president would have “no authority”, implying that authority would be vested in her. In a BBC television interview, she indicated she would be de facto president even if the de jure title went to someone else. “A rose by any other name,” she added. Everyone is waiting to hear who she nominates for the job.
“This is in many ways a momentous opportunity for the people of Burma,” says Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser, deliberately using the country’s pre-Tatmadaw name. “We had been very focused on this election. It is a critical milestone in evaluating Burma’s democratic transition.” Supportive as the United States is, it expects Ms Suu Kyi to live up to her international image as a human rights advocate. It has been noted she did not field a single minority Muslim candidate in the election. Nor has she spoken out forcefully against the persecution suffered by Myanmar’s Rohingya population.
American expectations cannot be ignored. The United States lifted sanctions during the reform process, thereby allowing investment funds to flow into Myanmar which enabled the country to lessen its dependence on China. China is still the country most engaged in Myanmar. But India and the Association of South-East Asian Nations speak of constructive engagement, meaning they are prepared to do business providing the Myanmarese do not violate human rights too flagrantly.
The ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, an advocacy group of South-East Asian legislators, complains that Myanmar’s military still enjoys immunity for rights violations, especially in ethnic minority areas, and that women face sexual violence. It also believes that discriminatory policies threaten the very existence of the Rohingya community. “We remain concerned about the politics of exclusion and hatred,” APHR says.
It’s unrealistic to expect Ms Suu Kyi to tackle these problems even before she has established herself in authority. How she does that is what matters most just now. President Thein has promised a “smooth” transition. She must hold him to it.
