Min Aung Hlaing’s self-appointment to the position and the formation of the new government were announced on Sunday as the Southeast Asian country marked sixth months under military rule imposed by his State Administration Council (SAC). On the same day, he said elections would be held by 2023.

Since the military seized power from the democratically elected government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in February, Myanmar has been in turmoil economically, socially and politically. The regime has been struggling to rule the country in the face of popular protest and civil armed resistance. Currently, highly contagious new variants of the coronavirus are battering the country.

The caretaker government is nothing new to Myanmar. In 1958 when the then ruling Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) was divided by faction and intrigue, then Prime Minister U Nu handed state power to then military chief General Ne Win after securing a promise from the general that an election would be held in six months. Ne Win agreed and formed a caretaker government, in which he was the prime minister.

However, the election was not held until 1960. Ne Win handed power back to U Nu’s party after its victory at the polls. Two years later, however, the general seized power back through a coup, claiming that the Union of Burma (Myanmar’s former name) was in danger of disintegration under the U Nu government.

After the takeover in 1962, Ne Win held power for 26 years as the supreme leader of the country. He turned what had been Southeast Asia’s most prosperous nation into a poor socialist state, isolating the country from the outside world and pushing it into the ranks of the poorest nations, with Burma earning the UN’s Least Developed Country (LCD) designation in 1987. Ne Win’s dictatorship was toppled by a nationwide popular uprising in 1988, but the protests were brutally cracked down on by the army, paving the way for another period of direct military rule until early 2011.

Given this historical context, the regime’s announcement on Sunday of the caretaker government and its promise to hold elections in two years were met with skepticism.

“The military is back in absolute power for the long haul,” said Bertil Lintner, a Swedish journalist who has been covering Asia for decades.

He said if anyone had any doubts about Min Aung Hlaing’s intentions when he ousted the democratically elected government in Feb. 1, it should now be clear to all that the military grabbed absolute power in order to crush any attempts to establish genuine civilian rule, which was the aim of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s ousted National League for Democracy government.

A Yangon-based political analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue said the regime appeared set on holding power for as long as it can. He said that by forming the caretaker government the junta was merely playing another card in its game of misleading the international community into believing that it is not a regime, but rather a government that is holding power temporarily.

“They won’t give it back and it will be really bad for the country,” he said.

Min Aung Hlaing earlier promised he would hand over power to whichever party won the next election. On Sunday, he said the polls would be held in 2023 after the state of emergency period was over.

Last week, the regime officially annulled the 2020 election results, which saw the NLD win a landslide victory, claiming the NLD violated the constitution and election laws. The regime has also been working on disbanding the NLD over the alleged violations.

Given the existing situation, it’s doubtful the NLD will survive to see the election Min Aung Hlaing has promised.

Myanmar’s recent history also shows that the generals rarely keep their promises and are not reliable when it comes to polls.

When the NLD won the general election in 1990, the then military regime didn’t honor the results. They organized an election in 2010 that saw its proxy party win but the polls were internationally dismissed as a sham.

For the 2023 election—if it happens—one possible scenario is that a regime-backed party will have the upper hand with the demise of the NLD.

Lintner said it’s “criminally naïve” to believe that the military will hand over power to a democratically elected, civilian government.

Echoing Lintner, the Yangon-based analyst said parties backed by the regime will contest the vote, with one of them eventually forming a government.

“The regime will make sure that one of them will win,” he said.

The Irrawaddy

• The Irrawaddy 2 August 2021:
https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/fears-of-another-long-dictatorship-as-myanmar-coup-maker-appoints-himself-pm.html

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 Myanmar’s Military Regime Lacks Legitimacy and Capacity to Govern

The military regime that suppressed the nationwide 1988 pro-democracy uprising and staged a bloody coup in September of that year was able to consolidate its power and run the country.

Now in 2021 – six months after staging its coup – the junta known as the State Administration Council is still unable to control Myanmar. Opposition to the regime remains steadfast and strong, no matter that the junta formed a caretaker government on the weekend.

In 1988, then coup leader General Saw Maung along with General Than Shwe, General Tin Oo and General Khin Nyunt, the feared intelligence chief, were in firm control weeks after snatching power, ruling under the name the State Law and Order Restoration Council.

Just like current coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, they were brutal and murderous men, but they managed to consolidate their power and authority over the country.

Within months of the 1988 takeover, civil servants were back at work and street demonstrations had ceased, with pro-democracy activists in hiding, on the run or imprisoned by the military.

Moreover, regional commanders effectively controlled the administration and kept the country in order. Subsequently, the regime even introduced an open market economy and economic liberalization policy that attracted a flurry of foreign investors in the early 1990s.

Today, in 2021, Myanmar is teetering on the brink of becoming a failed state. The people are clear that they don’t want the return of military rule and the junta doesn’t have the power and influence to govern the country. The military behaves like barbarians, a foreign occupying force that can only deploy violence.

The junta appears to have been taken aback not just by the scale of protests, but by the ways they are organized – loose networks of young people, especially the young, tech-savvy Generation Z.

Civil servants are refusing to work for the regime. Private banks are still struggling to reopen, while several foreign companies including Telenor have left the country altogether.

A recent World Bank report said that Myanmar’s economy is forecast to shrink by 18% in the last quarter of 2021, as it grapples with the double whammy of the coronavirus pandemic and the political turmoil unleashed by the coup. The contracting economy threatens millions with poverty, joblessness and hunger. Within a year or so, millions of Myanmar citizens are likely to migrate to neighboring countries.

Looking at Myanmar today, the country’s trajectory is alarming. The country is going through a severe economic, social and political crisis, the worst since independence in 1948. The coup has had a catastrophic effect, including prompting a boom in illicit trade and drug production in eastern Myanmar’s Shan State.

At the same time, armed uprisings are spreading in both the countryside and cities. Targeted assassinations, bombings and the killing of regime officials and informants continue. The military is unable to crush this rebellion.

In the ethnic areas of the country, some of the heaviest fighting has raged in Chin and Kayah states, which have not seen any widespread insurgencies for decades. New armed rebellions have spread to Sagaing and Magwe regions, just as they did in the British colonial era, with frequent attacks on military outposts in recent months.

Unlike the ethnic armed organizations that have been fighting for self-determination and autonomy for decades, these civilian resistance fighters are not equipped with automatic rifles but with hunting guns, homemade weapons and bombs. Nevertheless, this new type of rebellion poses a serious threat to the regime

The promise of the ‘caretaker government’ to hold elections in two years from now is not realistic. Just like in the past, the military will only hold elections and re-open the country when they feel that, as in 2010, they can control a military-guided transition to a new government.

It is doubtful that coup leader Sen. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing believes he will be able to hold a general election in 2023. Why? The junta have burned all their bridges. They have grabbed the tiger’s tail and now they cannot let go.

Even if there is an election in the future, the regime is determined to prevent the National League for Democracy, which won the 2015 and 2020 elections, and ousted civilian leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from taking part.

For now, the coup is still incomplete and facing strong opposition from the people, while most of the international community do not recognize the regime as the legitimate government of Myanmar.

The struggle for the future of the country will be long and protracted and requires both regional and international intervention.

The Irrawaddy

• The Irrawaddy 2 August 2021:
https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/editorial/myanmars-military-regime-lacks-legitimacy-and-capacity-to-govern.html

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 Commentary: For Myanmar’s Top Generals, Overturning Election Results Is a Rite of Passage

As long as the current breed of military generals survives in Myanmar, the country will be forced to live with overturned election results, the rejection of the people’s democratic choice and the ousting of elected governments at the point of a gun. On Monday night, the most recent junta formed by these generals officially announced the annulment of the results of the 2020 general election.

This is the third time the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, has revoked the results of an election since the generals first seized power in 1962.

The three top generals from successive generations have turned this undemocratic path into a military tradition. General Ne Win’s coup d’état in 1962 nullified the result of the 1960 election, and Senior General Than Shwe and his deputies did the same for the result of the 1990 vote. This year, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has done it again, sweeping aside the result of the 2020 general election.

Such dictatorial power seizures have become an all-too-familiar step in a vicious circle perpetuated by the generals over the past 59 years.

Each of them has systematically destroyed the country’s democratic system at different times by abolishing the results of elections, which underpin democracy.

As long as these generals meddle in politics, Myanmar will find it impossible to become a democratic nation despite the strong will and unyielding struggle of the entire population.

In multiple elections stretching over decades, Myanmar’s 55 million people have repeatedly demonstrated their clear desire for the generals to stay away from politics.

In the last election in November 2020, the majority of the 27 million citizens who cast ballots backed the National League for Democracy (NLD) headed by the country’s now ousted de facto leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. As in every previous election it had contested over the previous three decades, the NLD won a landslide victory.

The voters cast their ballots with their hearts, but their hearts were crushed by Min Aung Hlaing. That’s the way his predecessors did it in 1962 and 1990.

After three such bullying, undemocratic rejections of the people’s desire, there can be no reconciliation with these violators of the national will.

“Forgive” and “forget” are no longer in the people’s vocabulary. An already sour relationship has hardened into irreconcilable hostility. There is no longer room for talking, only fighting, as seen in the actions of the many protesters who have taken up arms in recent months.

The people, in reality, have been aware since the coup that one of the main aims of Min Aung Hlaing was to reject their vote for the NLD, disband the party and ultimately to maintain power—either under the military or a new system dominated by its generals—forever.

Everything coup maker Min Aung Hlaing has done from the Feb. 1 coup to this final official rejection of the election result has served to close the door to reconciliation between the military and society, or politically speaking, between the NLD or any civilian government and the military leadership.

Perhaps, those advocates or politicians who promoted a relationship between the civilian NLD government and the military over the past decade will now understand that their attempts failed and there seems to be no room for such a relationship in the future, unless a new breed of generals who can accept and at least follow basic democratic norms emerges in the military leadership.

Otherwise, the idea of a civilian-military relationship in Myanmar is just a delusion.

In reality, there has never been such a relationship.

There have never been any leading generals who sincerely accept basic democratic norms like elections, or the need to respect their results as the people’s will. Over the past decade, some observers, including even politicians who had contact with high-ranking military officials, argued that some generals would be moderate. Now, however, their arguments appear threadbare, lacking a scrap of tangible evidence. Perhaps those military officials just put on too good of a show, while their apologists were just too trusting.

As long as it is run by the breed of generals who have led it since 1962 (in other words, from the Ne Win era to the Min Aung Hlaing era), the military will never accept democracy. And there won’t be any reconciliation between the military and the people.

Principally, or simply, the military’s role as an institution is to defend or protect the nation and its people. A standard military is not supposed to get involved in politics. That’s a basic principle that most societies grasp—but not so the generals of this country. They have always involved themselves in politics at all levels, interfering in the people’s decisions and rights in ways both big and small, including the right to vote.

Why? The generals are addicted to absolute power and the economic benefits derived from it, which have made their families, relatives and associates enormously rich. They have become the elite of all elites in this poor society.

What these generals are too stupid to see is that all they have succeeded in doing is destroying the reputation of their own institution, making the military the most hated institution in the country. They don’t see that their actions can only lead to their own downfall.

The junta’s formal rejection of their votes on Monday night will positively embolden the Myanmar people to make good on their motto: “Down with the military regime.”

Naing Khit

Naing Khit is a commentator on political affairs.

• The Irrawaddy 27 July 2021:
https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/commentary/for-myanmars-top-generals-overturning-election-results-is-a-rite-of-passage.html

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 Commentary: Myanmar’s Coup Leader Shows His Genocidal Intent

U Nyan Win would be alive today had he not been arrested on Feb. 1, the day of the coup, and thrown into Insein Prison. Technically, the cause of his death on Tuesday morning was COVID-19, but the real agent of his demise was not the coronavirus, nor his age, at 79; it was the Myanmar military and its arbitrary arrest and detention of him.

Clearly, it was his captor that killed U Nyan Win.

Coup maker Senior General Min Aung Hlaing ordered the arrests of dozens of senior members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and the elected government it led, as well as the detentions of other leading military critics, activists and civil society group members early on the morning of Feb. 1, hours before his military officially announced its takeover. Since then, Min Aung Hlaing’s regime has arrested more than 5,000 anti-coup protesters and thrown them into its horrible prisons, torturing many of them.

The orchestrator of the coup was their captor.

U Nyan Win, a legal adviser and key member of the NLD, was among those arrested. Despite his advanced age and some underlying conditions, he was still basically healthy in early July, when his lawyer Daw San Mar Lar—who was representing U Nyan Win in a sedition case brought against him by the military regime—met him in Insein Prison. On July 11, he was transferred to Yangon General Hospital after becoming infected with the coronavirus in his cell. He died nine days later.

U Nyan Win would not be dead if coup maker Min Aung Hlaing had not staged the coup. Certainly, Min Aung Hlaing’s decisions and actions were what killed the NLD stalwart. Of course, the general has already proved himself to be a mass murderer over the past five months, in which time his soldiers and police have killed more than 900 anti-coup demonstrators, including children, in the most brutal and violent ways. The victims’ wounds show that the military is deliberately targeting civilians with head shots and that many of those who have died in custody were tortured to death.

But the death of U Nyan Win shows that Min Aung Hlaing and his regime have adopted another means of murder—a passive form of killing in which enemies of the regime are deliberately left to the mercy of the coronavirus and its potentially deadly effects inside unprotected prisons.

U Nyan Win became Myanmar’s first political prisoner publicly known to have died of COVID-19 in detention. Sadly, he almost certainly won’t be the last, as there are other political prisoners who, like U Nyan Win, are elderly and suffering from COVID-19. A few days after U Nyan Win was hospitalized, reports emerged that another senior leader of the NLD, U Han Tha Myint, was also hospitalized after being infected with COVID-19 in Insein Prison. He is 73. The NLD’s ousted chief minister of Yangon, U Phyo Min Thein, was also hospitalized after being infected at a military detention center in Yangon. His detained wife was also reportedly infected. Though the former chief minister is relatively young, in his 50s, he underwent heart surgery several years ago.

Among more than 5,000 political prisoners held by the regime, several hundred detainees are senior members of the NLD, its ousted government ministers and officials, and elected members of the party. As was the case with U Nyan Win, all of the NLD’s leading members are in their late 60s and 70s.

Dr. Zaw Myint Maung, vice chairman of the NLD and ousted chief minister of Mandalay Region, is one of them. There are unconfirmed reports that he is in poor health in prison, as he needs regular treatments for leukemia.

The lives of all of them are at tremendous risk as long as they are in the military regime’s detention. No doubt their family members all live in fear of receiving the kind of appalling news that U Nyan Win’s family was confronted with this week. On social media, the detainees’ supporters have individually demanded their immediate release. Many have accused Min Aung Hlaing of intentionally letting COVID-19 kill them in prison. Of course, the international community has consistently demanded that the regime release the ousted civilian government leaders and all political detainees.

Coup maker Min Aung Hlaing, however, has no thoughts of doing so. He is acting with intent; his intention is to destroy all of his opponents. These comprise members of the ousted NLD government, the popular party’s senior leaders like U Nyan Win and their staunch supporters, and others. What they have in common is their political legitimacy and their opposition to his rule.

Min Aung Hlaing definitely has politically genocidal intent—he seeks the deliberate killing or destruction of a large number or all political dissenters; those who seek democracy for Myanmar.

Min Aung Hlaing had that intent when he staged the coup. Put another way, what he has been doing since Feb. 1 is waging a campaign of genocide against political dissidents and members of pro-democracy parties like the NLD (the junta’s Union Election Commission said it is likely to disband the party), ethnic parties, civil society groups, independent media, rights groups and too many others to name.

This vicious campaign has attempted to weaken the resistance of the people of Myanmar against the military dictatorship. The international community led by the United States has no political leverage to end this genocidal campaign by Min Aung Hlaing, and is limited to expressing their concerns and denouncing the junta’s persecution.

On the ground, Myanmar people will see more killings in many forms—not only fatal head shots and deadly torture, but also passive killings of the kind that led to the death in detention of political dissenter U Nyan Win. Who will be next? And the next? And the next? The regime’s intention is for the “nexts” to continue to unfold until this generation of its political opponents is extinct.

A real political genocide is being committed here by the military regime. Its chief, Min Aung Hlaing, is the epitome of evil in Myanmar. Yet he remains at large.

Naing Khit

Naing Khit is a commentator on political affairs.

• The Irrawaddy 27 July 2021:
https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/commentary/detained-nld-advisers-covid-death-was-a-political-execution-by-myanmars-junta.html

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