Myanmar and the fight for democracy
Despite Aung San Suu Kyi’s failings, the military coup is a test of our democratic fidelity.
NAYPYITAW, MYANMAR—Myanmar’s military staged a coup Monday and detained senior politicians including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi — a sharp reversal of the significant, if uneven, progress toward democracy the Southeast Asian country has made following five decades of military rule.
Immediately after he was named president, Myint Swe handed power to the country’s top military commander, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.
An announcement read on military-owned Myawaddy TV said Min Aung Hlaing would be in charge of the country for one year. It said the seizure was necessary because the government had not acted on the military’s claims of fraud in November’s elections — in which Suu Kyi’s ruling party won a majority of the parliamentary seats up for grabs — and because it allowed the election to go ahead despite the coronavirus pandemic.
Under Myanmar’s 2008 constitution, the president can hand power to the military commander in cases of emergency. That is one of many ways the military is assured of keeping ultimate control of the country.
Min Aung Hliang, 64, has been commander of the armed forces since 2011 and is due to retire soon. That would clear the way for him to take a civilian leadership role if the junta holds elections in a year’s time as promised. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party’s humiliating loss in last November’s elections would probably have precluded that. The military justified the coup by saying the government failed to address claims of election fraud.
The takeover came the morning the country’s new parliamentary session was to begin and follows days of concern that a coup was coming. The military maintains its actions are legally justified — citing a section of the constitution it drafted that allows it to take control in times of national emergency — though Suu Kyi’s party spokesperson as well as many international observers have said it amounts to a coup.
The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting Tuesday on the coup, which Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called “a serious blow to democratic reforms” in the Southeast Asian country.
The council will look at “a range of measures” to uphold the Nov. 8 presidential election won by Suu Kyi’s party and secure the release of the Nobel peace laureate and other leaders arrested by the military, said Britain’s UN ambassador, Barbara Woodward, who is this month’s council president.
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric says the world body has been unable to contact officials in the capital and has no information on those being held.
Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said she was alarmed by reports that 45 people have been detained and urged their immediate release.
The coup now presents a test for the international community, which had ostracized Myanmar while it was under military rule and then enthusiastically embraced Suu Kyi’s government as a sign the country was finally on the path to democracy. U.S. President Joe Biden threatened new sanctions, which the country had previously faced.
For some, Monday’s takeover was seen as confirmation that the military holds ultimate power despite the veneer of democracy. New York-based Human Rights Watch has previously described the clause in the constitution that the military invoked as a “coup mechanism in waiting.”
The embarrassingly poor showing of the military-backed party in the November vote may have been the spark.
Larry Jagan, an independent analyst, said the takeover was just a “pretext for the military to reassert their full influence over the political infrastructure of the country and to determine the future, at least in the short term,” adding that the generals do not want Suu Kyi to be a part of that future.
The first signs that the military was planning to seize power were reports that Suu Kyi and Win Myint, the country’s president, had been detained before dawn.
Myo Nyunt, a spokesperson for Suu Kyi’s party, told the online news service the Irrawaddy that in addition to Suu Kyi and the president, members of the party’s Central Executive Committee, many of its lawmakers and other senior leaders had also been taken into custody.
Television signals were cut across the country, as was phone and internet access in Naypyitaw, the capital, while passenger flights were grounded. Phone service in other parts of the country was also reported down, though people were still able to use the internet in many areas.
As word of the military’s actions spread in Yangon, the country’s biggest city, there was a growing sense of unease among residents who earlier in the day had packed into tea shops for breakfast and went about their morning shopping.
By midday, people were removing the bright red flags of Suu Kyi’s party that once adorned their homes and businesses. Lines formed at ATMs as people waited to take out cash, efforts that were being complicated by internet disruptions. Workers at some businesses decided to go home.