Last week, Myanmar’s ruling military junta lifted the state of emergency that had been in place since it took power in a coup in February 2021. It also announced that an interim government had taken over, until elections take place this coming December and January.
On the face of it, this might have seemed like a good step forward, given that more than three million people have been displaced, several thousand civilians have been killed, and tens of thousands arrested during the violence and conflict over the past four years. But the news has mostly been greeted with scepticism.
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing remains in charge as acting President and chief of the armed forces. The National League for Democracy of Aung San Suu Kyi, which has won every free election it participated in (and was the government overthrown in 2021), has been deregistered, while Ms Suu Kyi is detained in solitary confinement.
The government in exile – called the National Unity Government – has denounced the forthcoming polls as a fraud. “Elections are fundamental to democracy, but the one organised by the junta is entirely illegitimate,” said U Kyaw Ni, the NUG Deputy Minister of Labour Affairs, earlier this year. “The Military Council, which seized power by disregarding the people’s will, cannot hold a fair election, nor can it resolve the ongoing political crisis.”
The most forthright external supporters of human rights and democratisation in Myanmar have, historically, always insisted that the military – which originally ended the country’s initial experiment with democracy in 1962 – could never be part of a solution. Even accepting the change of name from Burma to Myanmar was considered by diehard supporters of Ms Suu Kyi in the West to be giving in to a public relations exercise by the Tatmadaw, as the armed forces are known. What use, then, could be any election organised by them?
Except Myanmar’s second period of democracy from 2010 to 2021 was initiated by the Tatmadaw. And the overarching issue is: how can any lasting solution to the country’s numerous problems exclude them?
Myanmar is almost completely devoid of institutions that can bind it as one. Many historians consider Britain’s abolition of the country’s monarchy in 1885, after the Third Anglo-Burmese War, to have been a disaster. It removed the figure who stood at the apex of civilian, military and religious life and who could – after independence in 1948 – have played a crucial role in unifying the country’s numerous and varied ethnicities. Many of those ethnic groups in Myanmar’s frontier states had been converted to Christianity under the British, and they were also allowed to serve in the police and armed forces, while the majority ethnic Bamar, who are Buddhist, were discouraged from doing so. To say that there were forces pulling the country apart as the British were about to leave would be a major understatement.
The country’s revered, charismatic father of independence, Ms Suu Kyi’s father, Gen Aung San, might just have been able to keep the country together. But he was assassinated in 1947, and there has been a state of civil conflict – of various levels of intensity – ever since. Meanwhile, whatever atrocities and repression they have been associated with, the Tatmadaw have also always been the country’s one dominant, omnipresent institution. People who truly want the best for Myanmar have to concede that any dialogues about its future must include them.
This is something that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim appears to realise. As this year’s chair of the Association of South-East Asian Nations, Mr Anwar had already initiated significant moves to lower tensions in Myanmar. After his recent triumph in persuading the leaders of Cambodia and Thailand to agree to a ceasefire on their border, he has fresh impetus.
In April, he met Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in Bangkok for “frank and constructive” discussions, and a day later held talks with the NUG, the government in exile. At the end of May, he invited different groups to come to Kuala Lumpur to begin a dialogue process, and this week he said: “We have initiated talks”, and that his meetings with the military and opposition leaders had reached “some agreements”.
“First, a ceasefire; second, to enable humanitarian aid access; and third, to continue dialogue aimed at stopping attacks,” he told Malaysia’s Parliament. “So far, the situation is better compared to previous developments.”
There may be no easy formula, but it may be worth reflecting on the period when Thein Sein, a former general, led the transition to full democracy between 2011 and 2016. As the Irrawaddy news site – no ally of the military – put it last year: “After decades of pariah status for Myanmar, Thein Sein’s administration won a degree of international legitimacy and support after launching political and economic reforms and allowing democracy icon Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to contest the 2015 election. International media compared him to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union.”
Thein Sein is retired, but he was invited to an important official event in China last year where he was greeted by President Xi Jinping. He may be able to play a useful role, but equally crucial is the fact that his example shows the Tatmadaw is not monolithic, and there may be other reformers and moderates in its ranks who can help negotiate a way forward.
Add to the mix recent reports that indicate the administration of US President Donald Trump has an interest in Myanmar. Last month, it quietly lifted sanctions on five individuals and companies linked to the junta. There is speculation the US is interested in sourcing rare earth minerals from the country’s far north; although as the mines are in a region close to China and controlled by an opposition group, any potential deals would be complicated.
Put this altogether, though, and you have a strong Asean chair determined to lead and make a difference, and who has already proved to be an effective interlocutor between Myanmar’s warring parties. You have a junta that is at least trying to give the appearance of change. And there is the possibility that just as the US and China supported Mr Anwar’s efforts to bring about a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand, the two countries may have their own reasons to support a course towards peace and stability in Myanmar.
There haven’t been many causes for optimism for friends of that sorely troubled country in recent years. This could just be one of them. Let’s not dismiss any element of this out of hand.
