The ex-generals in the old government were crestfallen. Some blamed reformists around the president for making possible Aung San Suu Kyi’s reemergence from what they believed was her enfeebled position in 2010. Many had harsher words for Shwe Mann, whose partnership with Aung San Suu Kyi they saw as treacherous. Soe Thane managed to bag a seat in parliament as an independent, representing a constituency in the remote Kayah Hills on the Thai border. Aung Min tried the same tactic and lost.
What next? No one knew. Within twenty-four hours, the USDP leadership admitted defeat. But would the old guard really allow Aung San Suu Kyi to be president? In 1990, when the NLD won a similar landslide, the army first prevaricated and then essentially ignored the results. For the next twenty years, they looked upon the NLD as their implacable foe.
On December 4, 2015, Aung San Suu Kyi met with former Senior General Than Shwe at his newly built residence in Naypyitaw. Than Shwe had, as he planned, made the transition from dictator to comfortable retiree. He had not been part of the picture for five years. There was no media coverage of the meeting and no official press release. Instead, Than Shwe’s twenty-four-year-old grandson posted a photo on his Facebook page that evening of a single 5,000-kyat banknote (about $5) signed (at different times) by Aung San Suu Kyi, Thein Sein, and his grandfather, together with a brief account of what had taken place. The meeting had lasted more than two hours, he wrote. At the end, Than Shwe said, according to his grandson, “It is the truth that she will become the future leader of the country.”1 No one knew exactly what that meant, but the old man seemed to be giving his blessing for a government headed by Aung San Suu Kyi.
How could this happen? Under the constitution, she was barred from the presidency as her sons were foreign citizens. She met around the same time with the army chief, Min Aung Hlaing, who made clear that this would not be changed. Constitutional amendments could be blocked by a quarter of the seats in parliament, which essentially gave the army a veto.
Resigned to not being president for the time being, Aung San Suu Kyi selected an old school friend, Htin Kyaw, for the role. Over six feet tall, the courtly Htin Kyaw, the son of a renowned poet, was a retired bureaucrat who had trained as a computer scientist in London in the early 1970s. He had no desire for high office and was assured by Aung San Suu Kyi that his presidency would last only a matter of months, while she found a way to convince the army to amend the constitution. In the meantime, she left no doubt who would wield power, telling the BBC’s Fergal Keane that she would make “all decisions” and would be “a rose by any other name.”2
Indeed, Aung San Suu Kyi would make all decisions on behalf of what became a ceremonial presidency. But she would also have to contend with the armed forces commander-in-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. Min Aung Hlaing was ten years her junior. Born in the far south, in the seaside town of Tavoy, he had grown up in a middle-class family in Rangoon, where his father served as a government civil engineer. He attended one of the best schools in the country and then studied law at Rangoon University. But in his early twenties he decided on a military career, left university for the Defense Academy, became an officer, and quickly climbed through the ranks.
By 2009, he was a major general and part of a new breed of more educated officers. That same year, he spearheaded the army’s successful blitz against the Kokang militia. In 2010, he became the first head of the armed forces under the new constitution. For a few years he took a back-seat role; President Thein Sein and many of the new ministers had been far senior to him in the military hierarchy. Then he started giving press conferences and interviews, including to opposition media, and even to the Washington Post. He also had his own Facebook page and Twitter account, posting sometimes several times a day about his visits around the country and frequent trips abroad.
He positioned himself as the guardian of the constitutional order. He also made it clear that he wanted his military transformed from the light-infantry counterinsurgency force it had been since inception into what he termed a “standard armed forces,” with state-of-the-art land, sea, and air capacities, defending the country’s borders. A bespectacled man with a ready smile, he was genial, almost self-effacing with visitors, in a way that belied his steely convictions. He was a staunch nationalist, clear in his own reading of Burmese history and clear in his belief that the army had a historic nation-building role to play. He would now have to work together with the daughter of the army’s founder, Aung San Suu Kyi.
It was a rocky start. From the NLD’s point of view, the desire of the people for Aung San Suu Kyi to lead them had been conclusively proven. The commander-in-chief’s unwillingness to allow the constitution to be amended was a sign of bad faith. From the army’s point of view, simply allowing their long-term (and, in their minds, Western-backed) foe to take charge of the government was a big risk and a big compromise. They believed they should be congratulated for allowing the NLD to chose whomever they wanted as president, other than Aung San Suu Kyi, not criticized for standing in the way of any further constitutional change.
But if the ex-generals were getting ready to cede the stage, at least some in the National League for Democracy had difficulty believing that power would really soon be theirs. One newly elected NLD member of parliament said to me that they had no idea what would come next, and that “we were even worried that we might all be arrested that first day in parliament.” A senior NLD official, a medical doctor, suggested to me at the time that at least a quarter of his colleagues, former political prisoners, might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. There had been little preparation for this moment, no policies waiting to be implemented, no real strategy for how to manage a future government.
The UK government, for its part, was happy in the expectation that it was now on the inside track. For decades, London had taken the hardest line against the old junta, driving European Union sanctions, showing solidarity with Aung San Suu Kyi above all else. Even with Thein Sein’s government they had held back, hoping for the day when Aung San Suu Kyi herself would be in charge.
The British saw themselves in a mentoring role. In 2012, they worried that Aung San Suu Kyi was not building enough of a team, and so, when she visited the Foreign Office in London that year, they had deliberately walked her past offices filled with staff before meeting foreign secretary William Hague “so she could be shown he did not work alone.”3
The UK government was now effusive in its offers of help. There was even talk of new NLD ministers going first to London “for training.” A young British diplomat was seconded to be Aung San Suu Kyi’s assistant, and Jonathan Powell, former chief of staff to Tony Blair, was made her new peace process advisor.
On March 30, Thein Sein formally handed over the presidency to Htin Kyaw. It was the high point of Burma’s democratic transition: the first peaceful transfer of power to an elected government since 1960. Thein Sein moved to a farm nearby. He said that the years he had spent in the presidential mansion were “the hardest time in my life,” and that his wife and daughters, who had often wept at the constant media attacks on the now departing head of state, called it “the hot house.”4
In the week that followed, the NLD-dominated parliament passed a law to create the entirely new position of State Counsellor for Aung San Suu Kyi. The post would allow her both to direct the government and to steer the NLD in parliament. When the army raised objections, on the grounds that the bill was unconstitutional, her party simply overrode them. The entire bloc of army officers in parliament stood up in protest during the vote. In an ironic twist of fate, one of the army officers present accused the NLD of “bullying.”5 Shwe Mann, seen as a turncoat by many other generals and ex-generals, was appointed head of a special parliamentary commission, even though he had lost his own seat in the elections. When the army objected to this as well, they were overridden again.
Aung San Suu Kyi also took on several ministerial portfolios, initially becoming minister for foreign affairs, education, electr
ic power, and energy. The rest of her cabinet of twenty-one were all men. It was the oldest cabinet in Burmese history, with an average age older than Aung San Suu Kyi, who was seventy-one. Many new ministers were NLD stalwarts, earnest and well-intentioned men, but with little experience in managing much at all. A few were ex-generals who had served in parliament, in the faction of Shwe Mann, rather than under Thein Sein. Others were bureaucrats brought out of retirement. The new minister for finance and planning, Kyaw Win, was quickly revealed as having bought a fake PhD from a Pakistani website.6 The media made a racket, but he was appointed all the same.
At the same time, Aung San Suu Kyi dismantled the ecosystem of advisors and think tanks that had surrounded Thein Sein and had constantly fed him and his ministers new ideas. This included the Myanmar Peace Center. The hundred or so young staff, many of whom had returned from abroad, were dismissed. The antipathy toward Thein Sein in recent years had been strong, and these institutions were viewed by the NLD as increasingly partisan. It was an unfortunate perspective: though several at the top had clearly aligned themselves with Thein Sein, the vast majority of staff, especially the younger ones, were fervent supporters of democratic change and came from the most liberal fringes of Burmese society. They would have gladly worked under an Aung San Suu Kyi government.
Harder to understand was the absence of any outreach to the hundreds of civil society organizations, activists, and exiles who been waiting for this moment and who wanted nothing more than to lend a hand. One young staffer at the Myanmar Peace Center told me that many of his friends had been divided: some had joined the Peace Center while others refused, saying they didn’t want to serve until the NLD came to power. None would have the chance.
Aung San Suu Kyi spoke again and again during these months about the importance of “national reconciliation.” For her, this chiefly meant reconciliation between the NLD and the army. Her overriding aim now was constitutional change. For that, she needed the commander-in-chief of the army on board. From her first entry into politics in 1988, she had emphasized at every opportunity that she loved the army, that the army was her father’s creation, and that she wanted more than anything to see it stronger and more respected than ever. And for that, she wanted the army beholden to an elected president, which would in the first instance be her.
In several of his interviews, the commander-in-chief had said that the army would indeed agree to constitutional change, but only once the country’s myriad armed conflicts were no more. With peace, the army’s safeguarding role would diminish. And so Aung San Suu Kyi’s priority became peace.
In February 1947, her father, General Aung San, had attended a special conference in the little highland town of Panglong, convened by the hereditary chiefs, the Shan sawbwas of the eastern uplands, to discuss Burma’s post-colonial future. The British wanted these chiefs and other representatives of the “Frontier Areas” to agree on a way forward before handing over power to Aung San. After a couple of days of discussion and compromise, a deal was struck: there would be a new “Union of Burma,” including both the lowlands and uplands, the uplands continuing to enjoy the autonomy they had under the British as well as equality as citizens of the new republic. It was not to be; within months, the country collapsed into civil war. But the dream of Panglong was there for some, not least Aung San Suu Kyi, who saw the event as one of her father’s great triumphs.
So she began thinking of a “21st-century Panglong,” a new conference, this time not of hereditary chiefs but of all the leaders of the myriad Ethnic Armed Organizations. They would hammer out a new compromise, setting the foundations for the “federal” and “democratic” constitution to come. She told visiting foreign ministers that this could be done quickly, within months. In the meantime, though, the old Myanmar Peace Center, the secretariat established under Aung Min, was dissolved. Aung Min offered help, but this was rebuffed. In his place, Aung San Suu Kyi appointed her personal physician, Dr. Tin Myo Win, to be chief negotiator. Among some of the ethnic minority leaders, there was optimism. They hoped the incoming government could skillfully mediate between them and the army.
The army leadership also began to think that Aung San Suu Kyi might be just the right person to be in charge. Because of her, the American, European, Chinese, Indian, and Japanese governments were all eager to please. The army’s relations with the West looked set to improve. In mid-July, Aung San Suu Kyi expressed a desire to visit the Defense Services Museum in Naypyitaw, a gargantuan complex that told the history of the country from the Stone Age to the present day from the army’s point of view. The commander-in-chief could well have sent any senior officer to greet her at the museum, but instead chose to escort her himself. A week later, he attended the commemoration in Rangoon of the anniversary of her father’s assassination, and took part the same day at a religious service at her home.
BURMA’S DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION seemed to be settling into its final chapter. Washington planned not only for close ties with the new government but for ties with the army as well. After all, at a time when the Arab Spring had turned into multiple nightmares and even Thailand next door was under a new military junta, the Burmese generals had been true to their word and had allowed their erstwhile foes to take office after free and fair elections.
Hillary Clinton was particularly excited. She was then running to be Obama’s successor as president of the United States. Ben Rhodes, then deputy national security advisor, was alone with her backstage after the Democratic Convention in August that year, and mentioned that he had just been in Burma. At that point Clinton “came alive, peppering me with questions.” She asked about Aung San Suu Kyi, her relations with the military, the peace process, and the situation in Arakan. They talked about the United Wa State Army and the Kokang militia. “She has to worry about the Chinese in all this, doesn’t she?” Clinton asked. This was just minutes after she accepted the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Barack Obama then came into the room and asked, “What are you guys talking about?” “Burma,” was the reply. Obama cared deeply about Burma too, but at that point he gave Rhodes a look that could only mean, “Are you crazy?”7
At the same time, the Chinese government was planning a comeback. They had carefully cultivated ties with Aung San Suu Kyi, welcoming her to Beijing the year before even though she was then still only the opposition leader. As soon as her new government was in office, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, sped to Burma to be the first foreign dignitary to pay his respects. In August, the Chinese Communist Party’s head of international relations, Song Tao, arrived to meet with all the most powerful figures in the country: Aung San Suu Kyi, the army commander-in-chief, ex-president Thein Sein, Shwe Mann, and even the old dictator Than Shwe. The Chinese were covering their bets, moving methodically.
On August 19, in Beijing, Aung San Suu Kyi met with Chinese president Xi Jinping, who “praised her efforts to follow in the footsteps of older generations.” As a princeling himself, the son of a senior revolutionary leader, he was curious about Aung San Suu Kyi and respected her as the daughter of a nation’s founder. Both stressed their paukpaw friendship. Paukphaw literally means “born together” and implies a blood affinity. There was a shared belief that the Chinese and the Burmese were racially akin.8
By then, the Chinese government felt confident enough that Aung San Suu Kyi was going to be good for Sino-Burmese relations that they gave her a special gift. The “21st-century Panglong” that Aung San Suu Kyi had convened was coming up in a couple of weeks’ time, and the big insurgent armies on the Chinese border were not sure if they wanted to turn up. The Chinese made sure they did, packing their leaders into a plane and flying them to Naypyitaw themselves.9
The conference attracted hundreds of ethnic minority delegates, including high-ranking figures from nearly all the armed organizations. It didn’t, however, produce any concrete results, so it was re-billed as the start of a series of conferences. There were days of speeches, for the most part light on substa
nce or strategy. The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, blandly said, “There is a long road ahead, but the path is very promising.” There was little discussion of the nature of capitalism as it had developed in Burma, of the booming illicit economies, or even of issues related to race and belonging. Instead, most delegates—there were nearly a thousand in all—took existing ethnic categories as given and sought a formula by which they could all live side by side in a new “federal” system of government. The plight of the Muslims in northern Arakan was not mentioned, as they were beyond the pale of included ethnicities. The word “Rohingya” was not uttered.
More ominously, though, the conference roused the suspicions of the army. They saw Aung San Suu Kyi relying on British assistants and advisors, and they worried that the peace process would be used to corner them, forcing them to accept sweeping constitutional changes. Worse, from their viewpoint, would be a peace agreement that didn’t include their number one goal: the disarmament of all the rival armed forces.
At the same time, the revolutionary dynamic that some on the military side might have feared from the new government was nowhere in sight. If anything, change was creeping along too slowly. Other than the conference, not much had happened since the handover of power six months before.
The old president, Thein Sein, had used his external advisors, quasi-government bodies such as the Myanmar Peace Center and an assortment of think tanks, in part to circumvent the old bureaucracy. Having dismantled these institutions, and with no grand strategy for reforming the public sector, the incoming administration was becoming dependent on the same bureaucrats, most ex-military men, who had been around since the days of the old dictatorship. In several ministries, there was one new man, the minister, usually a septuagenarian NLD loyalist with no government experience, trying to preside over thousands of long-serving civil servants, adept at managing red tape, many with their hands deep in the till. Parliamentary questions and answers were televised live, and ministers found themselves entirely reliant on their underlings for the answers needed to avoid public embarassment. By late 2017, the NLD was caught up in the vortex of Naypyitaw.
The Hidden History of Burma Page 24
