TheEconomistFebruary 6th 2021 151M
yawaddy, a television station
owned by the Burmese army, is nor-
mally so bad as to be unwatchable. But
when the residents of Naypyidaw, Myan-
mar’s capital, and Yangon, its largest city,
woke on February 1st to find soldiers in the
streets and martial music blaring from
their radios Myawaddy became “must-see
tv”. It was a Myawaddy newsreader who an-
nounced that the country was in a state of
emergency and under the control of Min
Aung Hlaing, the head of the army.
Soldiers were stationed in government
offices. Airports were closed and, in the cit-
ies, the internet shut down. Hundreds of
politicians from the National League for
Democracy (nld), which won an over-
whelming victory in the country’s parlia-
mentary elections last November, were put
under house arrest. The armed forces also
rounded up chief ministers from all the
country’s 14 states in addition to democra-
cy activists, writers, three monks and afilm-maker, Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi. Aung San
Suu Kyi, who became a figure of global re-
nown when she led the nldfrom house ar-
rest during the 1990s and 2000s, and who
as “state counsellor” was the country’s un-
disputed civilian leader, now finds herself
under lock and key again.
The army, known as the Tatmadaw, is
used to being in charge. When created
through conquest in the 19th century, Brit-
ish Burma lumped together over 100 differ-
ent ethnic groups. After independence in
1948 many of those groups promptly re-
belled against the new government. The
army, then as now dominated by officers
from the Bamar ethnic majority, began a
suppression of such separatism that has
gone on ever since. After toppling a demo-
cratically elected government in 1962 it
stayed in power almost continuously for
nearly 50 years, justifying its rule on the ba-
sis that it was the only institution capable
of holding the country together. In 1988 itsavagely quashed a democratic uprising.
In 2011, though, the Tatmadaw amazed
the world by making way for a civilian gov-
ernment. There were two reasons. The first
was that they were worried about the coun-
try’s direction of travel. Decades of dip-
lomatic isolation by the West had forced
Myanmar into China’s orbit, something the
generals were uneasy about. They were
also embarrassed about the country’s econ-
omy, which they had driven into the
ground. In 1962 Burma had been one of
Asia’s richest countries. Fifty years later it
was one of the poorest. In 2008 the regime’s
woeful response to Cyclone Nargis, which
killed 140,000 people, destroyed any ves-
tiges of credibility it might still have had.
The second reason for allowing a civil-
ian government was that the Tatmadaw
thought it could do so without really losing
power. The generals painstakingly de-
signed a hybrid political system that en-
trusted the thankless task of governance to
civilians but enshrined the Tatmadaw’s in-
dependence and many of its powers. In the
constitution for this “discipline-flourish-
ing democracy”, as they memorably called
it, the commander-in-chief of the army ap-
points the man who is notionally his boss,
the minister of defence, as well as the min-
isters of the interior and border control. He
thus commands all the organs of state se-
curity. A quarter of the seats in parliamentReversion to type
SINGAPORE AND YANGON
A general’s thirst for power has shut down democratic ruleBriefing Myanmar’s coup