The Junta's Road to Democracy

By Dr. Tayza

Since they first came to power by a coup, after crushing down 1988 people power movements, the State Peace & Development Council (SPDC) military junta of Burma had promised that they would restore democracy in Burma.

To make good of their promise, the junta held a multi party democracy general election in May 1990. The then junta chief General Saw Maung again and again confirmed at that time that power would be handed over to the elected civilian government after the election and the army would go back to their barracks. But it seemed that they under-estimated people’s support for the main pro-democracy party National League for Democracy (NLD). They hoped that pro-military Union Solidarity Party would win more than 50% or at least almost 50% of the seats.

When the election results were declared, the Generals were shocked by National League for Democracy’s (NLD’s) landslide victory. NLD won about 85% of seats and, with its allied parties, the pro-democracy alliance won more than 90% of the seats. General Saw Maung who had promised to hand over power to the election winning party was, hence, trapped in the corner. Soon his deputies, who were worried that their chief was liable to transfer power as promised, spread rumours that their chief had gone literally mad and then they removed him from office.

The new chief, the current one, Senior General Than Shwe never assumed that he needed to honor his predecessor’s promises. Instead he made new claims that the elected people’s representatives in 1990 election were not to convene the parliament but to draw up principles for a new constitution. And he called a National Convention, for making up a constitution, with a small number of people’s elected representatives and a large number of junta appointed delegates.

When National Convention started in January 1993, pro-democracy parties and ethnic minority groups sent their representatives to the convention hoping they might be able to influence on the drawing up of the future constitution. But, very soon, they started to realize that the National Convention had two fatal flaws since its inception. The Convention had no fixed timetable, so the Generals could delay it, postpone it and adjourn it as much as they liked. And the Generals never intended the convention to be free and independent - they had already learnt their lessons in the free and fair elections of 1990.

Accordingly, the main pro-democracy party, National League for Democracy and its allies walked out of National Convention as a protest on junta’s too much and too heavy-handed interference in all aspects of the convention. Soon many ethnic groups followed suit, and the National Convention was adjourned in 1996. But, if pro-democracy parties had hoped that their walking out and the convention having had to be adjourned would make junta repent, they just found out their hopes never materialized. The Generals were secretly very happy that Nation Convention hadn’t born any fruits and had been adjourned for an indefinite length of recess. As long as the constitution drawing business was yet un-finished, the Generals thought, they could hold on to power pretending as if they were a legitimate transitional government.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s icon of democracy, seeing the deadlock in the democratization process, decided in 2002 to make negotiations with junta’s general secretary (or, secretary 1 as they called it) General Khin Nyunt. For a short while the negotiations went a bit well. For a short while it gave a glimpse of hope for the long suffering people of Burma. But junta’s hard-line generals were never happy with the negotiations; they were worried that General Khin Nyunt would make too much concession.

So, to curb General Khin Nyunt’s powers and to undermine the on-going negotiations, they removed him from his post as general secretary of junta and made him the Premier which effectively reduced his influence on the junta and army. Khin Nyunt’s replacement, Gen. Soe Win, immediately made a plot to assassinate Aung San Suu Kyi while she was touring around the country. He unleashed junta’s semi-political wing, the so-called Solidarity Association, to attack Aung San Suu Kyi and her followers. Members of that Solidarity Association (also called Kyant-phonts) attacked a public rally of Aung San Suu Kyin in a small town, Depayin, in central Burma in May 2003. Although she was not killed, more than 300 of her followers were killed while trying to protect her with their lives.

Then, Aung San Suu Kyi and leaders of her party were put back behind bars. Her negotiation partner Gen. Khin Nyunt’s powers were reduced to a minimum and eventually he was sacked in the later part of 2004.

Junta now assumes that they have totally got the upper-hand. The ball is in their court, they think. Aung San Suu Kyi and her deputies are in jail. Her party, the National League for Democracy, is virtually non-existent any longer. Most of the ethnic resistant groups have been forced to surrender. And, above all else, they have found huge reserves of natural gas in Burma’s off-shore gas-fields, with which they have lured regional big powers China, India and Japan to their side. With gas money, they are procuring big purchases of military hard-ware and nuclear technology from Russia.

And, their arch nemesis in international arena, the United States, is fully occupied with problems in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Lebanon. So they are pretty confident that they have nipped any potential UN Security Council action on Burma in the bud.

Now the junta is pressing ahead with constitution drafting process, as part of their seven step road-map to democracy, and this time they have serious intentions of really finishing up the constitution. They have included in the constitution all the clauses required to make sure that it will enshrine military’s dominance in Burma’s politics perpetually. They have finished drawing up 90% of their constitution in last year’s convention, although it was not attended by any pro-democracy party or any credible ethnic organization. And they will very soon reconvene the convention to finalize the draft of their pro-military constitution.

Executive Director Gus Miclat of Initiatives for International Dialogue (IID), a human rights NGO advocating democracy in Burma, said that Burma’s National Convention is worse than a tsunami. "A tsunami hits very rarely, but a military-influenced constitution will cause lifetime damage in the lives of the already oppressed Burmese people," Miclat explained.

Junta’s constitution explicitly states that any future President must have military experience, thus implicitly baring all civilian politicians from the top job in the land. And, it also degrees that both houses of Parliament must give up 25% of seats to delegates from the military, hand-picked by the Generals. And the President will be elected by the Parliament from three Presidential candidates_ one from each of the two houses of Parliament and one from the military top-brass. But, as Presidents must have military experience, any one with an ounce of sense can guess who will eventually become President.

To get their constitution approved in a referendum, junta has already mobilized their Solidarity Association as a militant semi-political machine, to which almost all government servants plus students and teachers from high-schools and Universities all over the country have already been forced to join. And all the jobless men made redundant by Burma’s worsening economic situation are also conscripted into that Solidarity Association.

And to make sure that 1990 election results are not repeated, junta has made it clear that they can, and will, declare the main opposition party, the NLD, illegal if and when they think it is required. And they have already given life imprisonments to ethnic politicians. And they also have given death sentences, in absentia, to leading pro-democracy activists in exile.

So now the junta’s road ahead to democracy is clear. The only drawback is that it’s just a shambolic fake democracy.

Dr. Tayza is a human rights activist from Burma, currently in UK publishing a human rights campaign journal "Burma Digest". He also occasionally writes (freelance) opinion articles, about Burma’s pro-democracy movement, for other journals and newspapers. Dr. Tayza submitted this article to “Asian Tribune.”

- Asian Tribune -