Soldiers strip their khakis in Myanmar
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - As the November 7 general election in Myanmar approaches, the ruling
junta is revealing the political designs underway in order to place the
powerful military under civilian authority.
The latest of these steps came to light on August 27 when the news broke that
senior military officers were resigning from the army, taking many Myanmar
watchers by surprise. This shake-up is to make them eligible to be the civilian
face of the new pro-junta government that is expected to emerge after the
democratic election, the first in the country in two decades.
But a cloud of uncertainty hangs over one question: Is reclusive strongman, the
77-year-old Senior Gen Than Shwe, to be on that
list of resigned officers? Media outlets run by Burmese journalists in exile
claim that Than Shwe has stepped down as military supreme commander, but this
could not be independently confirmed.
"Burmese junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe and his deputy Gen Maung Aye have
resigned their military posts, along with six other top military officers,"
reported The Irrawaddy, published in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. "The
eight top men will retain their government posts," a story on The Irrawaddy
website added, quoting sources from the capital Naypyidaw in central Myanmar.
A Yangon-datelined report from Reuters news agency concurred with that
assessment. "Myanmar's top three rulers resigned from the military Friday, a
senior army source said, paving their way to assume the most powerful roles in
the country after a parliamentary election in November," it said, using the
name the junta calls the country.
Under Than Shwe’s watch, the size of Myanmar’s military has doubled to some
450,000 troops in this Southeast Asian country of more than 53 million people.
Friday's announcement of senior officers shedding their military fatigues for
civilian attire also resulted in a reshuffle in all regional commands and
ranking military positions.
This has allowed an unprecedented number of younger officers to move up in a
military that has held power since its suppression of a pro-democracy uprising
in 1988 left over 3,000 protesters dead. "This is the biggest military
reshuffle since 1988, involving around 200 senior military officers," said Win
Min, a Myanmar military affairs expert living in exile.
This move by Than Shwe is linked to the general election, added Win Min. "By
making this biggest military reshuffle, Than Shwe appears to believe that he
can control the electoral process to make sure his party will win the elections
and he can control the new military leaders."
"Than Shwe also seems to believe that it is better for him to handpick the new
generation of military leaders before the elections to make sure of their
loyalty," he said. "This new generation of officers are in their 50s."
The reports of resignations and reshuffles come four months after Prime
Minister Gen Thein Sein and 26 senior military officers quit the army to
contest the November poll as candidates for the pro-junta Union Solidarity and
Development Party (USDP).
Under Myanmar's 2008 constitution, which was approved in a referendum plagued
with fraud, the new president to be selected after the November polls has to be
a civilian who is "well acquainted" with military affairs. The charter, which
spells out changes in Myanmar's political order after the poll, has language
that emphasizes greater civilian authority over the military.
The last time Myanmar, then known as Burma, had such a hierarchy in place was
from 1974, when the second constitution came into force, until the bloody
crackdown of the pro-democracy movement in 1988. The government was then in the
hands of the Burma Socialist Program Party (BSPP), which was created by then
strongman General Ne Win, who had grabbed power in a 1962 military coup.
The 14 years under the BSPP, whose ranks had many retired military officers,
saw a semblance of the supremacy of civilian authority, unlike the early years
of the Ne Win dictatorship where the army ruled in the military-dominated
Revolutionary Council.
The BSPP government sustained this veneer of 'democracy' by holding elections
every four years, none of which provided for a multi-party contest. Voters had
only one choice - the party's nominee. Against this backdrop, some Myanmar
watchers find Than Shwe's move to give the appearance of greater civilian
authority over the military very much in line with the BSPP years.
"Anybody who thinks that this is a latent sincerity towards democracy is
deluding themselves," said David Scott Mathieson, Myanmar consultant for Human
Rights Watch, a New York-based global rights lobby. "They are doing it to have
a veneer of respectability."
"They have created one-sided laws that favor their party," Mathieson said. "But
the signals they are sending out is that they want to stay within the laws."
It was to protest such restrictions that the political party of pro-democracy
leader Aung San Suu Kyi decided to boycott the November poll, leading to the
official disbandment of the National League for Democracy (NLD). The NLD had
won a thumping victory at the last general election in 1990, but the military
regime refused to recognize the outcome.
To avoid a repeat of that nullified result, Myanmar's new constitution
guarantees the military 25% of seats in the 498-seat national legislature.
Likewise, the USDP's candidates, including retired military officials, enjoy
more financial muscle and freedom to campaign than the 40 other political
parties in the running in the poll.
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