Burma Redux: Global Justice and the Quest for Political Reform in Myanmar (20 page)

Ultimately, however, 37 parties were approved. Five were pre-existing and 32 were new. This was a major reduction from 1990, when 235 parties applied to contest the poll and 93 took part. Candidates per constituency also fell from 4.7 in 1990 to 2.6 in 2010.
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Moreover, in 2010 only two parties mounted national campaigns.
²⁰
The Union Solidarity and Development Party, formed from the USDA, stood loyalist candidates in more than 1,100 seats.
²¹
The NUP, successor to the BSPP and major loser to the NLD in 1990, contested about 1,000 constituencies. Each had more candidates than the other 35 parties combined. The two main opposition parties were the National Democratic Force, formed by former NLD members, which contested 163 constituencies, and the Democratic Party (Myanmar), which contested 47. The most visible ethnic challenge came from the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party, which fielded 157 candidates. Every other party stood fewer than 50 candidates, and some were very small indeed.
²²
Especially in territorial assembly elections, the choice for many voters was binary: USDP or NUP.

The campaign lasted for two months, and covered the entire nation apart from the small number of border areas judged unsafe for electoral politics. In this regard there was an improvement on 1990, for then electioneering did not take place at all in many peripheral parts.
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However, the blanket ban on ethnic parties in Kachin State and the election’s failure to penetrate core Wa areas were important concerns.
²⁴
In line with 1990 practice, the 2010 campaign was marked by a limited relaxation of free speech and assembly restrictions decreed in September 1988. Nevertheless, advance permission for party political gatherings was still mandated, unless conducted at party offices. Candidates were also required to refrain from saying or writing anything that might incite sedition or tarnish the image of the state or
tatmadaw
.
²⁵
In August 2010, Richard Horsey, former ILO liaison officer, argued that “parties and individuals will likely exercise a considerable degree of caution in what they say, and initial indications are that the media will also be constrained.”
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An anodyne campaign fully confirmed his analysis.
²⁷
It concluded with a quiet election day and a reported turnout of 73.8 percent. Voters cast ballots for the lower house of the national parliament, the upper house of the national parliament, and the relevant territorial assembly. Counts then took place in individual polling stations, purportedly in the presence of candidates and members of the public.

The official result of the 2010 election saw the USDP take 884 seats (77 percent), with 259 out of 325 in the lower house of the national assembly (80 percent), 129 out of 168 in the upper house (77 percent), and 496 out of 661 in territorial assemblies (75 percent). The NUP took 62 seats (5 percent): 12 in the lower house, 5 in the upper house, and 45 in territorial assemblies. The NDF secured 16 seats (1.5 percent). The most successful ethnic parties were the SNDP with 57 seats (5 percent) and the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party with 35 seats (3 percent).
²⁸
This outcome was barely credible.
²⁹
Substantial amounts of advance voting, estimated at 10 percent of the total, favored the USDP to an implausible degree, and other ballots were clearly coerced or bought.
³⁰

Nearly three months later, on January 31, 2011, Myanmar’s national parliament assembled for the first time since 1988, triggering ratification of the 2008 constitution. As highly secretive proceedings unfolded, however, military rule looked to be largely undisturbed. On February 4, the electoral college backed Thein Sein, hitherto premier, for the presidency with 408 votes. Elected to the two vice-presidencies were former junta stalwart Tin Aung Myint Oo (171 votes), and prominent Shan doctor Sai Mauk Kham (75 votes). Shwe Man, also a former SPDC member, was elected speaker of the lower house, and retired general Khin Aung Myint ran unopposed for speaker of the upper house.
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When Thein Sein later unveiled his cabinet of 30 ministers, all were either USDP affiliates or serving generals. All were also male. On March 30, the entire PDC structure from SPDC down to village tract and ward level was dissolved, and power was vested in the Union Government. Formally, Than Shwe relinquished his two key portfolios to Thein Sein, President of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, and General Min Aung Hlaing, Commander-in-Chief of the
tatmadaw.
However, since active or retired military personnel still exercised considerable control, with Than Shwe himself clearly still a key figure, the extent of political reform appeared to be limited. The dark joke circulating locally was that Than Shwe had “indeed handed over power—from his right hand to his left hand.”
³²

Several analysts noted that in a context of considerable continuity there were nevertheless areas with important potential for growth. In March 2011, an ICG report focused on five main aspects. First, a generational transition had taken place, with younger and more technocratic figures moving into some senior positions. Second, some state power had been diffused among the presidency, military, parliament and dominant party. Third, some state power had been decentralized to provincial assemblies. Fourth, the role of the military had been checked to some degree. Fifth, over time Than Shwe’s influence was likely to decline to some extent.
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The report detected opportunities for outsiders to promote incremental reform. In April 2011, Kyaw Kyaw analyzed a brief legislative session before a long parliamentary recess, and noted that alongside abundant shortfalls the two houses were beginning to deliver “a level of accountability, or at least disclosure, from the military that has probably not been present for several decades.” He identified many possibilities for institutional development, and for gradually opening up a closed political system through exposure of senior military officials to civilian influences and points of view.
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Such arguments were deeply controversial at the time, and will remain so until meaningful political change takes place.
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Transitional process

Notwithstanding the label attached to it and any future possibilities that might unfold, the polity created in Myanmar in 2011 is not democratic. It is true that the core concept is mutable and contested.
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Over the years the stamp of democracy has been applied to a number of different models.
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Moreover, at the thin end of a broad spectrum it does taper to little more than formal proceduralism in a competitive struggle for the popular vote.
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However, even when democracy becomes this narrow the current system fails the test, for the claim that anything resembling competitive electioneering took place in 2010 is risible. More importantly, the extent of military control injected into the 2011 polity makes the entire system structurally long on discipline, and short on democracy. Back in 2004 when the National Convention resumed its work, USDA Secretary-General Htay Oo warned that “The multi-party democratic system being built in Myanmar may not be identical to those of other countries.”
³⁹
It turned out to be an accurate forecast. In these circumstances, the only viable analytical strategy is to insist that there are limits to how far the core concept can be stretched before it becomes something else entirely.
⁴⁰
Standing behind this insistence is the belief that while democracy is enhanced by some adjectives, it is diminished by others. Given the damaging qualifier chosen by the generals, reformers have little choice but to pick up on the Latin American aspiration of the 1980s for a democracy “without adjectives.”
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For Myanmar to return to a path associated with all that notions of Burma now symbolize, a break with authoritarianism remains necessary.

How to make that breach and sponsor a transition to a genuinely democratic system is the biggest challenge facing reformers. Broadly, the strategic choice lies between two alternatives. Incremental change can be undertaken to roll back authoritarianism and build up democracy. While this creates the potential for seamless, peaceful reform, it also promises to take a long time. Alternatively, radical change can be promoted to sweep away all trace of praetorian democracy and construct an entirely new political system. Although this holds out the welcome prospect of a polity untainted by military influence, it is also likely to generate considerable violence. Generally, many Myanmar watchers in academia and the wider commentariat stand on the side of gradual change, as does the whole of Asian officialdom. Against them, many activist groups in global civil society promote radical change, and some western governments have sometimes taken this position.
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For now, however, the issue of external interest and engagement is set to one side, and comparative analysis of options confronting the Myanmar people is the sole interest.

In the academic literature on transitions, two major camps in many ways map onto this strategic choice. Sheri Berman calls them preconditionists and universalists. “The former believe that democracy generally emerges from a particular set of conditions and experiences, while the latter claim that it can come about in all sorts of ways and settings.”
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Preconditionists thus generate lists of required factors. Universalists look instead to leadership and political will. By and large, preconditionists held sway in the 1950s and 1960s through studies such as Seymour Martin Lipset’s
Political Man
(1960), Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba’s
The Civic Culture
(1963), and Robert A. Dahl’s
Polyarchy
(1971).
⁴⁴
As democracy’s third wave swept the globe after 1974, however, the universalist claim that democratization is triggered by politics and can take place in almost any context came to the fore.
⁴⁵
With the collapse of communism in the late 1980s and the looming end of history, democracy promotion stretching from advocacy groups and INGOs all the way up to the commanding heights of the US government became the order of the day.
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At the same time, the Kantian concept of the democratic peace took its place as received wisdom among policymakers.
⁴⁷

Only with the grave disappointment of the Bush administration’s Iraq engagement did preconditionists regain the initiative. Then, Amy Chua’s
World on Fire
(2003), Fareed Zakaria’s
The Future of Freedom
(2003), and a body of work by Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder captured attention.
⁴⁸
“Of course,” wrote Mansfield and Snyder of the sequencing approach presented in
Electing to Fight
(2005), “the international community and their pro-democracy allies may not be able to manage each transition in the optimal way, but if the sequence goes wrong, the world should expect trouble.”
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Likely problems are not only violence, but also diminishing long-term reform prospects by making a false start on democracy. When conditions promoted as conducive to democratization are examined, three main domains open up.

First, reaching back ultimately to Aristotle but drawing more fully on recent empirical work, modernization theorists emphasize economic factors. In the late 1950s, when Lipset examined social conditions supporting democracy, economic development came out as critical.
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In the mid-1960s, the link was confirmed in Barrington Moore’s famous dictum: “No bourgeois, no democracy.”
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Moreover, while other scholars focused on the role of the working class, economic progress remained key.
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Later analysis by Adam Przeworski and others examined the material consequences of political regimes and held that although development does not generate democracy, it does sustain it.
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In turn, this contention was challenged by scholars arguing that economic maturity also boosts the probability that a country will make a transition.
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In 2005, modernization theory was comprehensively reasserted by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel.
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