Military power grab deals killer blow to Myanmar's fledgling democracy

Myanmar woke up on Monday to what may be the end of its short fling with democracy, after Aung San Suu Kyi, its civilian leader, and other senior figures from her ruling party were detained as the military seized power, declaring a state of emergency for a year.

Parliament had been due to start sitting on Monday after the National League of Democracy won a landslide in a November election. Instead, Myanmar now faces a fresh coup that will strain regional ties and prove to be an early foreign policy test for the new Biden administration.

The mass arrest in a dawn raid has stoked fears of a permanent return to the military rule that the Southeast Asian nation endured for five decades before a landmark democratic election in 2015 propelled Ms Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and former political prisoner, to power.

Thant Myint-U, a renowned Myanmar historian and former special adviser for the troubled country’s peace process, summed up the sudden development in an ominous prediction.

“The doors just opened to a very different future. I have a sinking feeling that no one will really be able to control what comes next. And remember Myanmar's a country awash in weapons, with deep divisions across ethnic & religious lines, where millions can barely feed themselves,” he tweeted.

Over the weekend, he had already warned of the dire consequences of plunging a country which already has tens of millions in poverty, and is rife with armed conflicts and hundreds of militias, into further political crisis during a pandemic and severe economic downturn.

Monday’s shocking events suggest, however, that for Myanmar’s military chiefs, led by General Min Aung Hlaing, clinging to power trumps all other considerations.

Their actions follow what many had already feared was a hollow reassurance by the military on Saturday that it would not abandon the constitution. The statement tempered predictions of an imminent coup but did not eradicate concerns that the military may be seeking to take power.

The showdown between military and civilian leaders has been looming since the NLD won 83% of parliamentary seats in the November 8 election, thrashing the military’s proxy party and reportedly threatening the presidential hopes of General Min Aung Hlaing, who oversaw the brutal ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims in 2017.

It was only the second election since the end of military rule in 2011, and the army immediately claimed fraud, threatening to “take action” even as the election commission rejected their allegations.

Although the 2015 election had been internationally celebrated as a rare handover of power from a military junta to a civilian government, in reality, the generals retained control over the powerful ministries of defence, home and border affairs, plus a 25% of unelected seats in parliament.

Aung San Suu Kyi was once heralded as an international champion of human rights for enduring nearly 15 years of house arrest during her campaign against the junta, but when in government she became one of the military’s most vocal defenders, rebutting accusations of genocide against the Rohingya.

Her loyalty, at the cost of her international reputation, won her popularity in the majority Buddhist nation but little protection from the military. Myanmar’s already fragile experiment with democracy, and western hopes of it fully returning to the international fold, are now hanging in the balance.

The army’s actions “means that participatory politics — I am reluctant to term it liberal democracy, even though elections took place — in Myanmar will take an enduring hit,” said Avinash Paliwal, associate professor of International Relations at SOAS University of London.

“Worse of all, the struggling peace process is likely to collapse entirely,” he said.

The military had begun to feel threatened by Ms Suu Kyi’s popularity within the Bamar-Buddhist belt, where her “more-nationalist-than-most” populism risked undermining their own political interests, said Dr Paliwal.

But the most powerful driver of the coup may be the military’s internal rift between reformists more open to inclusive politics and engagement with the West and the deeply conservative faction headed by General Min Aung Hlaing, which values military superiority above international ties.

“The timing has to do with the fact that he is close to retirement and sees this as his last chance to set things in a direction that he and his conservative military colleagues see the country to be on,” he said.

The White House and other Western allies expressed immediate alarm on Monday morning, urging the release of elected officials and a return to Myanmar’s democratic transition, but existing sanctions against top military officers over the Rohingya crisis leave little room for further manoeuvre.

Targeted sanctions had likely prompted the country’s top general “to lash out harder without much worries about losing the West and little concern about losing China either. He knows he’s very important for both China & India,” said Dr Paliwal.

Anthony Nelson, senior director for East Asia Pacific at the Albright Stonebridge Group, said members of Myanmar’s military viewed the 2015 poll as an aberration and genuinely believed there had been fraud during the 2020 elections.

He argued the question now was whether the military would look to neighbours like Thailand where the army still has a significant voice in elections but allows some room for dissent, or try to “put the genie in the bottle and return to the totalitarian state of pre- 2010, where the country was truly isolated.”

He added: “It seems almost certain more sanctions from Western countries will soon be in place, the only question is if they are targeted enough to leave space for individuals to continue to build links to the world.”