The Coup Clutch Clan

Lauded by the world in 2015, when the military junta, which had ruled Myanmar for over five decades, gave up some of its powers, thus allowing for a modicum of democracy after national elections, the country has returned to the dark ages. Myanmar’s fragile experiment with democracy ended abruptly early on February 1 with yet another army coup. Unwilling to accept the people’s verdict, which gave Aung San Suu Kyi’s National  League for Democracy (NLD) a clean sweep in the November 2020  parliamentary elections, the army detained Suu Kyi, President Win Myint, other top political leaders, opposition leaders and writers and activists. Army commander General Ming Aung Hlaing took charge, declaring a year-long emergency, and putting democracy on hold—all on charges of election fraud. A shocked international community called for the immediate restoration of democracy and the release of detained leaders. The UN Security Council will discuss the fast-developing situation in Myanmar.

For the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, it has been a rude awakening. Once admired as the symbol of resistance against repression, Suu Kyi spent over15 years (1989 to 2010) under house arrest, even refusing to visit her dying husband in Britain for fear the military may not allow her to return. After displaying such exemplary courage and personal sacrifice, the global icon for human rights activism had, in recent years, become a defender of the military’s savage repression of the Muslim Rohingyas in Rakhine province. Her refusal to speak out—she even defended it in an international court at the Hague—has left her international reputation in tatters. By ref­using to condemn the carnage, Aung San Suu Kyi lost much of her goodwill. Many wanted her to be stripped of the Nobel for her regressive stand against the hapless Rohingyas. Can Suu Kyi now salvage her reputation?

But why did Myanmar’s military dec­ide on the coup? After all, the 2008 constitution had ensured that it continued to call the shots in all crucial matters, under a veneer of civilian rule. Indeed, 25 per cent of seats in Myanmar’s 440-member parliament, or 110 members, are reserved for military appointees. The remaining 330 lawmakers are directly elected by the people. In 2015, the NLD won by a landslide and Suu Kyi, as party chief, should have been president, but the army, taking recourse to a law that disqualifies a citizen from that post if he/she is married to a foreigner, denied it to her. Suu Kyi was married to an Englishman. Though Suu Kyi became ‘State Counsellor’, she remained the most powerful person in the party and government.

In the 2020 elections, the NLD won by a bigger margin—83 per cent of the seats in Parliament. This time, a nervous military was not willing to accept the people’s verdict. On January 28, the army challenged the results in the Supreme Court, dem­anding a recount and a delay of the new parliament’s opening session. Before the new MPs could meet on February 3, the army swooped down on Suu Kyi and other leaders, putting an end to the pretense of supporting a civ­ilian government. “The military was not happy with one half of a loaf of bread; they wanted the whole,” says Rajiv Bhatia, a former ambassador to Myanmar.  Ambassador Bhatia points out that long used to absolute control, the military was uneasy with Aung San Suu Kyi’s election landslide and her soaring popularity among the majority Buddhists.

There have also been speculations about Gen Ming Aung Hlaing’s own political ambitions. The general bec­ame military chief in 2011 and worked closely with Suu Kyi after the 2015 elections. But their relations had soured in the recent past—the two fell out and have not spoken to each other for nearly a year, according to local media reports. Gen Ming was to retire in 2016 but hung on to power. He had reportedly said that he would step down by the summer of 2021. Some bel­ieve that the falling out with Suu Kyi had cast a shadow on whether he would be in a position to continue his network of patronage, which brings with it great power. Now, with Gen Ming fully in control of Myanmar, he will ensure that the results of the 2020 elections are nullified.

Furthermore, the general had been condemned worldwide for his part in the persecution of Rohingyas. The UN Human Rights Council said in 2018: “Myanmar’s top military generals, inc­luding Commander-in-Chief Senior General Ming Aung Hlaing, must be inv­estigated and prosecuted for genocide in the north of Rakhine state, as well as for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan States.’’ Previously, the US and UK had both slapped sanctions on him.

Myanmar, which had been subjected to Western sanctions during the previous stint of military rule, is likely to face international sanctions again. The new Biden administration is certain to ensure that the military faces consequences for overturning the results of a democratic election. However, as in the past, the military rulers will turn to China. Beijing already has a strong presence in the country, building roads, dams, bridges and other major infrastructure projects. When President Trump urged the world to boycott Huwaei’s 5G system, Myanmar had turned a deaf ear. As in the past, China will ensure that Myanmar is cushioned against Western sanctions.

“India will follow a pragmatic, dual- track policy. The government will exp­ress moral and political support for dem­ocracy, while it will continue to do business as usual with the military rulers,” Bhatia says. This had stood Delhi in good stead in the past. Initially, India had gone out on a limb for the pro-democracy movement, refusing to engage with the military junta. But in 1992, PM P.V. Narasimha Rao opted for a more pragmatic approach. Realising that China was filling the vacuum left by India’s withdrawal, he began the process of engagement with the military rulers of that time.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who was then under house arrest, was sorely disappointed that a democratic nation like India would turn its back on the NLD. During her first visit to India after her release from detention, she publicly berated New Delhi for this, forgetting that India continued to shelter thousands of pro-democracy activists who had fled the country. In fact, during Atal Behari Vajpayee’s term, when India continued its engagement with the military, then defencse minister George Fernandes all­owed Burmese exiles to bring out Mizzima,  a pro-democracy news outlet, from a section of his sprawling official residence in the capital.

India will continue to engage with Myanmar mainly because it does not have the luxury of ignoring a country with which it shares a 1,468-km border on its sensitive northeastern flank. Myanmar is also integral to New Delhi’s Act East policy, as a bridge between India’s Northeast and the larger ASEAN market.