Out in droves: A banner featuring Suu Kyi is displayed as protesters take part in a demonstration against the military coup in front of the NLD office in Yangon on Feb 15, 2021. — AFP
Prospects for a political resolution to Myanmar’s turmoil have darkened after the military junta recently dissolved the only civilian party that has won all polls in the past decade.
They are not helped by the junta’s aerial bombardments of civilian targets, killing more than 160 people in one day in April, which has hardened the people’s resolve against the military.
The deepening crisis poses a conundrum for Asean. Member states disagree on how to deal with the regime.
As the Myanmar junta buys time to entrench itself, Asean risks running out of room to support the Myanmar people’s democratic aspirations.
Recent visitors to Yangon say there are few obvious signs of the malaise afflicting the country.
While villagers in the northern Sagaing region have learnt to flee at the first sight of a fighter jet, residents in Myanmar’s commercial capital can commute relatively smoothly, shop at its many malls and dance in its clubs till the wee hours.
The junta’s iron grip on cities gives a veneer of normality that bolsters its narrative: that the country is fighting only terrorists instead of being engulfed by a multi-fronted civil war.
With support from major powers like China and Russia, the Myanmar regime has predictably shrugged off Western sanctions, including those on entities supplying fuel for its military jets.
Elusive elections
The likelihood of an election looks increasingly elusive two years after the military ousted the civilian National League for Democracy (NLD) government.
The junta, which calls itself the State Administration Council (SAC), dangled in 2021 the prospect of polls around August 2023. In January this year, junta chief Min Aung Hlaing was reported as saying that a “free and fair election must be held in all places”.
But a reality check is in order.
First, the SAC ordered a re-registration of all 90 political parties ahead of elections – something that NLD and 39 other political parties refused to do because they did not recognise the SAC’s authority. On March 29, these 40 parties ceased to exist under the junta’s legal regime.
Second, the SAC now even avoids mentioning a date for the polls, the plans for which were widely regarded as an exercise meant to usher the junta-linked Union Solidarity and Development Party into power.
Third, Hlaing’s remarks about a free and fair election across the country looks to be a tall order, given how some constituencies were left out of even pre-coup polls due to the security situation.
Fourth, in March, the regime’s immigration minister Myint Kyaing announced that a census will be held in October 2024, reducing the likelihood of any election before then.
The following month, junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun refused to give a date when asked by Al Jazeera news network if an election would be held in 2023.
He said it would depend on the security situation.
“Out of 330 townships, 192 are peaceful and have no safety concerns. Still, 67 are not safe enough and 65 have major security concerns and stability needs to be restored there,” he said. “To hold the general election successfully, all the townships and constituencies need to be safe and secure.”
In other words, the junta admitted that it controlled only about 60% of the country.
Securing all townships and constituencies seems like a pipe dream given the armed conflict raging in the northwest and southeast of the country.
The coup and subsequent military repression spawned “people’s defence forces” that battle the regime. Only a portion of these forces is controlled by the National Unity Government (NUG), a shadow government that rivals the SAC for legitimacy.
“This is a military regime that marches very much to its own beat, at its own pace,” said ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute senior fellow Moe Thuzar, who coordinates its Myanmar Studies programme.
“The SAC is playing it safe. It is saying, ‘We will do elections because we promised it, but there is a security situation in the country and we have to address that’.”
She stressed that the SAC conflates “security” with the security of the regime itself.
The human toll has been devastating.
Some 1.4 million people out of Myanmar’s 55 million population have been displaced since the coup and an estimated 60,000 properties burnt and destroyed, according to the latest update by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In a reflection of its priorities, the junta has devoted over a quarter of the current fiscal year’s budget – or about US$2.7bil (RM11.9bil) – to defence.
Analysts have pointed out that the regime’s heavy reliance on air strikes is a sign that it is struggling to retake parts of inland Myanmar, where local resistance forces with deep knowledge of the ground have repeatedly repelled troops trying to enter by land.
Lion v hyenas
“This is like a lion fighting against a group of hyenas,” said Dan Seng Lawn, executive director of the Myitkyina-based Kachinland Research Centre.
“It has to guard its rear. It has to use its claws, but it can’t use all its claws at the same time.”
He likened the current situation to the immediate years after Myanmar’s independence in 1948, when the military battled ethnic armed groups seeking regional autonomy, as well as the Communist Party of Burma.
“It has become the pattern for the SAC to use its air force. This is an element of violence they are willing to use ... killing in large numbers to try to dismantle the morale of the resistance.”
The air raids have targeted administrative structures set up in areas where the resistance has taken root. This was the case of Pa Zi Gyi village in Sagaing, where military aircraft attacked during the opening ceremony for a local office on April 11.
On April 18, the military followed that up by sending helicopters to strike a community hospital in Magway region, according to the RFA Burmese news outlet.
It is unclear, though, how long the military’s air superiority will last.
On April 16, resistance groups launched rockets at an air force base in the capital of Naypyitaw, setting two aviation fuel storage tanks on fire, reported Khit Thit Media.
What’s Asean doing?
As the junta kicks the election can down the road, time is running out for Asean, say analysts. The bloc has been ineffectual in tackling the crisis in its member state since the coup.
Hopes were high that Indonesia – as the region’s largest democracy and a strong critic of the junta – would make headway in 2023 as Asean chair under a rotating arrangement.
But Jakarta has been discreet about its efforts to implement Asean’s two-year-old road map to help bring peace to Myanmar.
Departing from the path trodden by her counterparts in Brunei and Cambodia over the past two years, Indonesia Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi has not personally taken up the role of Asean special envoy on Myanmar. Instead, she has set up a special envoy’s office to coordinate work on Myanmar.
At a press briefing on April 5, all Retno would disclose was that Indonesia, as Asean chair, was engaging with a wider range of stakeholders, including new ones that were not involved before.
Dr Lina Alexandra, who heads the Department of International Relations at Jakarta’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies, questions this low-key approach, saying: “There should be a concrete implementation plan. There should be a roadmap of what Indonesia is going to do as the chair, and also beyond its chairmanship.”
She dismisses the notion that the annual rotation of Asean’s chairmanship severely constrains what each chair can achieve.
“You can’t achieve everything within one year,” she said, “but what you can create (is) the basis for a long-term Asean approach. And that has to be done by Indonesia because, to be frank, other Asean states might not want to think beyond their chairmanship.
They just hold on to this problem for one year, and then after that, push it to the next chair.”
Going by the alphabetical order, the next chair for Asean in 2024 is Laos, followed by Malaysia in 2025 and Myanmar in 2026. If the crisis drags on, would Myanmar have to forgo its turn at the helm?
Even before that thorny question is tackled, hurdles are already present in the differing attitudes that Asean member states hold about the legitimacy of the Myanmar junta.
Malaysia – under its former foreign minister Saifuddin Abdullah – held informal talks with members of the NUG, and its current premier, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, has called on Asean to ramp up efforts to tackle the Myanmar crisis.
Vientiane has engaged with junta leaders on multilateral platforms outside of Asean, while Thailand has treated Hlaing as Myanmar’s head of government.
At a virtual trilateral meeting on April 7, Thailand’s caretaker Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha held talks about transboundary haze pollution with Lao Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone and Hlaing, whom Bangkok referred to as “prime minister”.
Thailand also hosted the Myanmar junta’s then foreign minister Wunna Maung Lwin at an informal multilateral meeting in December 2022.
More recently, it held a “Track 1.5” dialogue involving government and private representatives from Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, China, Japan and Bangladesh, according to the Japanese media outlet Nikkei.
The Nippon Foundation and Centre For Humanitarian Dialogue, Japanese and Swiss NGOs that engage in humanitarian work, were also represented.
This is despite the fact that Hlaing and senior members of his Cabinet continue to be barred from high-level Asean meetings by virtue of the bloc’s insistence for a “non-political representative” from Myanmar.
Dr Lina said the more Indonesia keeps its work on Myanmar under wraps, the greater pressure Asean will face over time to drop its current position on Myanmar and embrace the SAC.
Such pressure will intensify when the SAC decides eventually to hold an election.
This is because some regional countries both inside and outside Asean would be willing to take an election as a sign of progress – even if it was run with ousted Myanmar state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi behind bars.
As the Myanmar junta settles into the long game, Asean risks losing the space to support the Myanmar people’s democratic aspirations. Asean needs to show people where it is heading before time runs out – even as it engages in quiet diplomacy. — The Straits Times/ANN
Tan Hui Yee is the Indochina Bureau Chief for The Straits Times.
