Myanmar Coup Imperils its Quasi-Democracy

By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, NB] Telegraph-Journal

The military in Myanmar overthrew the government of Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1. They claimed they mounted the coup d'état because her political party committed massive fraud in last year's election. She has been detained and a one-year state of emergency declared.

UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar Tom Andrews has called for sanctions and an arms embargo.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) won more than 80 per cent of the vote last Nov. 8, remaining hugely popular among the majority Buddhist electorate even in the face of allegations of genocide against the country’s Rohingya Muslims. It captured 396 out of 476 seats in the combined lower and upper houses of Parliament.

The Myanmar constitution forbade Suu Kyi from becoming president because she has children who are foreign nationals. Though her official title is state counsellor, Suu Kyi, now 75, has been the country’s de facto leader.

For the past five years, her once-banned party led the country after being elected in November 2015. The NLD was about to begin its second term in office.

But behind the scenes, the military has kept a relatively tight grip on Myanmar thanks to a 2008 constitution drawn up during the junta’s rule which guarantees it a quarter of all seats in parliament and control of the country’s most powerful ministries, including home affairs, defence and border affairs.

Could the NLD, with its majority, have amended the constitution? Unlikely, as that requires the support of 75 per cent of parliament, an almost impossible task when the military controls at least one quarter of the seats.

Following November’s election, the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) opposition immediately began making accusations of fraud after the vote. The allegation has now been repeated by the military, and General Min Aung Hlaing has taken control of the country.

Aung San Suu Kyi has herself had a checkered career. The daughter of the country’s founding leader, in 1991 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and hailed as “an outstanding example of the power of the powerless.”

The army had placed her under house arrest in 1989. Altogether, she was held captive for a total of 15 years over a 21-year period, until finally released in November 2010.

The military government had held national elections in May 1990, which Suu Kyi's NLD won, but the junta refused to hand over control. However, a slow transition to civilian control began, culminating in the 2015 election and her assumption of power.

But her image has suffered internationally due to her response to the crisis that befell Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority.

In 2017 hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh due to an army crackdown sparked by deadly attacks on police stations in Rakhine state.

Following independence from British rule in 1948, the Bamar majority in Myanmar built a nationalism that was based on the Burmese language and Buddhism, combined with an authoritarian state apparatus. Since 1962, it has been ruled most of the time by the military and has little experience with democracy.

Myanmar now faces a lawsuit accusing it of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), while the International Criminal Court is investigating the country for crimes against humanity.

Suu Kyi’s international supporters accused her of doing nothing to stop rape, murder and possible genocide by refusing to condemn the military or acknowledge accounts of atrocities.

Her defence of the army’s actions at the ICJ hearing in the Hague in December 2019 tarnished her reputation. In a 17-0 decision, the ICJ on Jan. 21 of this year rejected Myanmar’s argument that the deaths of the Rohingya were part of an “armed military conflict.”

The military removal of a regime is, by definition, non-democratic and speaks to something very wrong in the political life of a country. Most of us instinctively recoil from the idea.

But are all coups by definition bad? Actually, some have occurred, oftentimes as a last resort, against despots, tyrants and kleptocrats engaging in human rights violations or ethnic cleansing.

However, the new military regime in Myanmar will be no improvement over Suu Kyi’s and therefore has no redeeming features.