The Economist - USA (2020-11-07)

34 Asia The EconomistNovember 7th 2020

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authority. She has given the previously

meek anti-corruption commission some

teeth and repealed a few repressive laws.

She has refused to convene the security

council. She has also taken the power to ap-

point bureaucrats in the national and local

governments away from the Ministry of the

Interior.

Nonetheless, the only institution capa-

ble of returning the army to the barracks is

the army itself, and it will not do so until it

is convinced that the civilian government

is both capable of governing and commit-

ted to protecting the Tatmadaw, writes An-

drew Selth of Griffith University in Austra-

lia. “Discipline-flourishing democracy is

the only game in town,” says Ian Holliday

of the University of Hong Kong.

But even in areas where Ms Suu Kyi has

unfettered authority, she is no liberal. Take

the nld. She runs it like the Tatmadaw ran

the country: with an iron fist. “There is no

democracy in the party,” says Thet Thet

Khine. She should know: a member of the

nldfor seven years, she was sacked from

the executive committee in 2018 for public-

ly criticising government policy. (She later

quit the party to form one of her own,

which is contesting the election.) Ms Suu

Kyi does not delegate and is not cultivating

a fresh crop of leaders, even though she is

75 and has no clear successor.

Ms Suu Kyi’s authoritarian streak ex-

tends to the government’s relations with

civil society. It has repeatedly attempted to

muzzle its critics in court. In 2017 two Reu-

ters journalists, investigating violence

against the Rohingyas, were sentenced to

seven years in jail for breaking a colonial-

era national-security law. According to

Athan, a local watchdog, the government

has filed 251 suits against its critics, twice

as many as under the previous army-

backed government. The nld’s spokes-

man, Monywa Aung Shin, points out that

many of these cases were initiated by

army-run ministries. Yet the nldhas sued

critics of Ms Suu Kyi, and could easily re-

peal the laws used to silence journalists

and activists if it so pleased.

The government’s litigiousness has had

a chilling effect. The press is less free now

than it was during the final years of mili-

tary rule, says Zeya Thu, the editor of The

Voice Journal. “We are scared,” says Saw

Alex Htoo, an activist.

Ms Suu Kyi is also not proving the ally

many minorities hoped. She spent years

working with political parties that champi-

on assorted ethnic groups as they struggled

against their common enemy, the Tatma-

daw. She promised to defend their rights

and to broker an end to the many small

wars that have raged around the periphery

of the country, in areas inhabited mainly by

ethnic minorities. To that end, she has held

several inconclusive peace conferences.

But Ms Suu Kyi does not have “any clear

vision” of what a less centralised, federal

state might look like, argues Hla Myint of

the Arakan League for Democracy (ald),

which advocates for Rakhines, an ethnic

group from the state of the same name (see

map). During the nld’s failed attempt to

amend the constitution, ethnically based

political parties recommended more than

3,000 changes, many of them related to de-

volution. The nlddid not endorse a single

one. And just like the military-backed gov-

ernment that preceded it, the nldappoint-

ed one of its own as the chief minister of

Rakhine state, even though the Arakan Na-

tional Party (anp), another Rakhine party,

won a majority in the state election in 2015.

“We don’t see any difference so far between

the previous and current government

when it comes to their style of governing

our Rakhine state,” says Hnin Yu She of the

ald, which split from the anpin 2017.

Ethnic minorities are also upset be-

cause the peace process is flagging. Fight-

ing between the Tatmadaw and the Arakan

Army (aa), a Rakhine guerrilla outfit, has

escalated dramatically since 2019, to be-

come the most serious conflict in the coun-

try in decades. Fighting also smoulders in

Kachin and Shan states. Ms Suu Kyi is not

primarily responsible, in that she cannot

control the army. But she stood mutely by

when it ruled out the prospect of negotia-

tions by declaring the aaa terrorist group

in March and when it excluded it from its

covid-19 ceasefire. She seems not to wish to

broaden her dispute with the Tatmadaw by

questioning its handling of insurgencies.

In 2013, when she met Ben Rhodes, an

adviser to Barack Obama, he underscored

the importance of ending the country’s

many conflicts and evinced concern about

Rohingyas. He says she replied, “We will

get to those things. But first must come

constitutional reform”—for which she

needs the acquiescence of the army. “The

nld’s first priority”, says Mr Saw Alex Htoo,

the activist, is “to make peace with the mil-

itary, not peace with the country”.

Minorities are losing faith not just in Ms

Suu Kyi but in the political system itself.

Aung Kaung Moe (not his real name) is a

Rakhine student activist who was recently

jailed for protesting against an internet

blackout in the state. Your correspondent

asks if he has ever considered going into

politics. Yes, he says, often. But sometimes

he wonders if he would not be better off

throwing in his lot with the Arakan Army.

Ethnic parties’ success at the polls does not

translate into real political power, he says:

just look at how unfairly the nldtreated

the anp. By contrast, ethnic groups like the

Wa who seize territory and successfully de-

fend it are able to carve out autonomous

enclaves. “In Myanmar, in the reality, [eth-

nic armed organisations] are more power-

ful than the ethnic electoral political par-

ties,” says Mr Aung Kaung Moe. The aa,

which is wildly popular among Rakhines,

governs swathes of northern Rakhine state,

he notes. Many young Rakhines have given

up on the idea of a federal union. Now they

dream of independence.

In the border regions, where most mi-

norities live, Ms Suu Kyi has been knocked

off her pedestal. In the heartland, where

Bamars, the country’s biggest ethnic group,

predominate, support for “Mother Suu” is

strong. But even here, cracks have begun to

appear. More than twice as many Burmese

surveyed by the Asian Barometer Survey

(abs) last year prioritised the economy over

democracy. At first glance, there is much

for them to be cheerful about. Until co-

vid-19 struck, growth had averaged 6.2%

since 2015. The share of the population in

poverty fell by half between 2005 and 2017.

A middle class is emerging.

But growth is still slower than in the fi-

nal days of the military regime (see chart).

The imfreckons that the economy is un-

derperforming by a percentage point or

two, owing to weak domestic demand and

Not fast enough

Myanmar, GDP, % increase on a year earlier

Source:IMF *Forecast

10

8

6

4

2

0

20*1918171615141312112010

NLD wins election

THAILAND

LAOS

INDIA CHINA

BANG-

LADESH

BHUTAN

Yangon

Sittwe Rakh

ine

Ma

gw

e

Ka

yin

Kachin

Shan

Kayah

Bago

Mon

Ta

nin

th

ar

yi

Bay of

Bengal

Sagaing

Chin

Irrawaddy

Yangon

Mandalay

MYANMAR

Naypyidaw

Gulf of

Thailand

Andaman

Sea

300 km