Burma Redux: Global Justice and the Quest for Political Reform in Myanmar (14 page)

In the event, worse triumphed over better as
tatmadaw
leaders seized the chance to re-impose a brutal and crushing form of social discipline. At 4:00 on the afternoon of September 18, a radio announcement was made: “In order to bring a timely halt to the deteriorating conditions on all sides all over the country and in the interests of the people, the defence forces have assumed all power in the state with effect from today.”
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At 6:00, news of a junta formed under Chief of Staff Saw Maung was released. Again the constitution, this time of 1974, was abrogated, and rule by decree was instituted. Within days, a ruthless army clampdown had restored military order. On October 3, all government officials were required to return to work and pick up the pieces of their lives under the refurbished dictatorship. In Mancur Olson’s terms, rather than find themselves at the mercy of capricious “roving bandits,” the Burmese people had reluctantly chosen to be ruled by a somewhat predictable “stationary bandit.”
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From the outset, the dominion returned to Burmese hands in 1948 provoked militant dissent on the part of minority groups, first communist and soon also ethnic. However, a decisive political turn was taken in 1962. Both product of and reaction to colonialism, it had three key aspects. First, while a Leninist structure with Buddhist gloss never cohered, it did succeed in creating a garrison state. Second, behind all the rhetoric, state socialism was rarely more than an elaborate front for personalized military rule. Third,
tatmadaw
government lodged a fierce nationalist dynamic at the heart of the polity. It is in this sense that Michael Aung-Thwin holds formal independence in 1948 to be a “myth,” placing power in the hands of the westernized elite itemized by Badgley.
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Only in 1962 was a fully Burmese political identity reasserted, and interaction with the outside world severed. When chronic failure finally fomented a mass movement for democracy that for several months in 1988 spread open street protest to almost every corner of the country, military leaders extended their supremacy by reviving each of these three core features of the state.

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Dictatorship and deadlock

The directorate that brutally restored military power in September 1988 subjected the country it was soon to call Myanmar to fresh dictatorship. Initially taking the name SLORC before nearly a decade later becoming the SPDC, the junta comprehensively reaffirmed military supremacy. Not until 2011 was any attempt made to give state structures some detachment from the military machine. For analytical purposes, then, the years of junta rule can be treated as a fairly unified, though by no means static, interval. At the outset, however, it is important to be clear that drawing boundaries around this era is not to overlook ample continuities flowing into and out of it. State socialism before 1988 was defined by the firm grip of military control imposed in 1962. At least in the early phases discipline-flourishing democracy after 2011 seems likely to be little different, with political practices honed by SLORC and the SPDC carried wholesale into the new era. Nevertheless, government by junta did generate significant change in national development, and in key respects did recast the political landscape. Moreover, examining the period in some detail makes possible an audit of Myanmar at the start of its experiment in praetorian democracy, and enables it to be more than a mere snapshot. This chapter looks at political dispute, economic malaise and social control under the generals before closing with an evaluation. Its twin themes are the dictatorship that dominated the country for more than two decades, and the deadlock that was a direct political consequence.

Political dispute

Throughout its ascendancy, the junta’s priority was to control political space and curtail opposition to its rule.
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The heady days of 1988, when political possibilities opened up and individuals were free to assemble, make speeches, air views and demand change, were soon a distant memory. In their place came an intensification of authoritarian control under army leaders with initially no grand plan beyond imposition of militaristic order. Many speculate about what might have been had the democratic opposition been more unified, strategic and assertive either before the September 1988 clampdown or during the subsequent standoff. On these grounds Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership of a fragmented movement is sometimes questioned.
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Instead, the generals regrouped around what Charney terms a process of “perpetual delay” and slowly found their feet.
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While the NLD landslide in the May 1990 general election was a major challenge, SLORC nevertheless succeeded in diverting national politics into the constitutional meanderings of the 1990s. Ultimately, these took shape as a roadmap to democracy in 2003, a constitutional referendum in 2008, a general election in 2010, and a revival of notionally civilian government in 2011. In the other main sphere of low-grade civil war in ethnic minority territories, the ceasefire deals of the early 1990s also gave the generals breathing space and allowed them eventually to take the initiative in rolling out plans for incorporation of militias into the
tatmadaw.
Rule by junta was always contested, however, and on occasion key flashpoints ignited. At no point was dictatorship able wholly to break the twin forms of deadlock it faced. One saw democratic forces marshal immense moral authority against the generals’ Weberian monopoly of violence.
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The other saw armed conflict flare in peripheral parts, and when ceasefires were agreed found a degree of control ceded to ethnic nationality groups.

At the apex of the military-state complex little is known about how the junta went about its business, as the internal operations of SLORC and the SPDC were shrouded in secrecy. Initially SLORC had 19 members under Saw Maung, who held the chairmanship until a string of bizarre public outbursts triggered his retirement on April 23, 1992. Than Shwe, hitherto Vice-Chairman, then remained paramount leader until the revival of civilian government in March 2011.
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Partway through his long term, on November 15, 1997, SLORC was relaunched as the SPDC, with generally about a dozen members. Throughout it supervised the work of prime minister and cabinet, though overlapping memberships in high-level policy committees generated a fusion of power at the center. For his first decade in control Than Shwe was junta chairman, prime minister and defense minister, and a US evaluation at the time of Cyclone Nargis that “all roads lead to [the] Senior General” was long valid.
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Even within its own tight membership the junta rarely established total unity.
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Always it presided over an unwieldy and fractured structure with frequent breaks in a chain of command stretching down to 65,000 village units.
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As Skidmore wrote in 2005, “despite the entrenchment of military rule, there is no all-powerful military state here, no black-and-white understandings, and certainly no monolithic Orwellian entity overseeing all the Burmese people.”
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Nevertheless, ruling generals did succeed in building enough cohesion to sustain the position of the
tatmadaw
as the dominant institution within the state. Kyaw Yin Hlaing examines competing explanations for this conspicuous achievement. Rationalist accounts focus on utility maximizers. Cultural accounts emphasize traditional attitudes toward power. Formal institutional accounts look to a series of internal reforms. Agency framework accounts point to the success of hardliners in seizing control. Without dismissing any of these perspectives, he notes that two informal institutional mechanisms established under Ne Win played critical roles. One was a “tradition of discrete domains,” whereby members at all levels were careful to respect internal boundaries and not interfere in others’ business. The other was a policy of “mobilizing worthy insiders,” whereby good care was taken of members who fell in line, and bleak ostracism was imposed on those seen as causing trouble. He argues that these shared understandings enabled the junta and the wider
tatmadaw
to withstand considerable internal and external challenge.
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Focusing on the SPDC’s rather settled governance practices, four notionally separate and parallel hierarchies coalesced at many points. They sought to generate control in four overlapping domains: military, political, administrative and social. In the military sphere, the
tatmadaw
hierarchy combined at the top with the SPDC itself. Below that it was divided into a series of critical regional commands overseen by the junta. Following a purge of Khin Nyunt in October 2004 and a dismantling of the MI apparatus he headed, many surveillance functions were brought under core control.
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In the political sphere, Peace and Development Councils mapped on to and usurped socialist People’s Councils established at state, division, township, ward and village tract levels. In the administrative sphere, a decrepit state bureaucracy headed by a prime minister, cabinet and functional ministries supervised routine government operations.
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Incapacity was common.
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In the social sphere, the Union Solidarity and Development Association, formed on September 15, 1993 under SLORC Law No. 6/88, attempted to outflank opposition forces and dominate communal life. Again there was overlap, as senior SPDC figures were leading USDA patrons and PDC officials were close USDA collaborators. After the dismissal of Khin Nyunt, the USDA may also have taken on some MI functions. Assessing this edifice in 1998, Tin Maung Maung Than identified it as a prime example of the “national security state.”
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Throughout the period there was always some grassroots support for authoritarianism even beyond the many individuals who did quite well out of it.
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By consistently emphasizing its Buddhist credentials, casting itself as the defender of rural interests in a country where some 65 percent lived off the land, and delivering small benefits to peasants and farmers, the junta built “islands of favorable attitude” and “pockets of legitimacy.”
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Indeed, retaining the loyalty of Myanmar’s large majority of rural dwellers was always central to its governance strategy. Moreover, the disaggregated nature of the state and the dynamic form taken by local interactions with it meant that “multiple images” of the regime emerged, with struggle and accommodation existing side by side in a single national context.
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At village and ward levels, where attitudes to the regime were mediated by local officials from state bureaucracies, low-grade PDCs and the USDA, diverse responses to military rule played out. Sometimes, poor rice farmers valued central authority as protection from petty abuse and exploitation.

Nevertheless, the very fact of state fragmentation meant that problems were constantly encountered in holding together a large control edifice, and key parts were colonized to reinforce command. On seizing power, SLORC abrogated the 1974 constitution, ruled by decree and in principle could mandate anything. As Khin Nyunt put it in May 1991, “Martial Law means no law at all.”
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On the whole, however, the generals preferred to cloak their rule in legality by using codes from earlier times. One serviceable statute was the Emergency Provisions Act 1950, which outlawed “false news” and criminalized disruption of “the security or … stability of the union.”
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Each offence carried a maximum jail term of seven years. Similarly, the State Protection Law 1975 was employed to target citizens alleged to endanger state sovereignty and security. It was often cited by the junta to hold Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest. The Unlawful Associations Act 1908 allowed the head of state to declare any organization illegal. The Official Secrets Act 1923 provided for jail terms of up to 14 years for anyone found in possession of information deemed prejudicial to state interests.
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In postcolonial Asia it was not unusual for states to retain draconian laws from imperial times. Perhaps most obviously, Singapore has always done that to limit the reach of democracy.
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In Myanmar, though, the practice was taken to tyrannical heights. Furthermore, to fill any gaps the junta issued its own repressive codes, was prepared to act outside the law, and routinely made a mockery of due process.
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The farce of Aung San Suu Kyi’s May-August 2009 trial, which saw her house arrest extended after a nocturnal swim and brief stay by uninvited guest John Yettaw, is lavish testament.