DOUBTS remain over Myanmar military government’s intentions.
Asked how bad things are these days in Myanmar (Burma), the Western diplomat gave a brief reply. “It’s absolutely awful,” she said. “I’ve run out of ways to describe it.”
In recent months Myanmar – on the brink of economic collapse – has sunk further through the floor. There is almost no electricity, inflation is running at 60% a year and few medicines are available. Even water is in short supply, a remarkable feat for a tropical nation regularly engulfed by the monsoon. “There are power cuts for six hours a day. We used to use 200 gallons [760 litres] of diesel a month to run our generator. Now we use 2 000 gallons [7 600 litres] a month,” another official pointed out wistfully.
It is this creeping sense of entropy, of falling apart, that perhaps explains why Myanmar’s military rulers finally seem keen on rejoining the modern world. After four decades of isolation and brutal state repression, they are experimenting with something different. They call it national reconciliation, though this does not seem to mean democracy. Most importantly, though, the generals have freed their main adversary – the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Suu Kyi this week described her release as a “new dawn for the country”, but urged the international community to respond cautiously to events in the capital, Rangoon. “We only hope the dawn will move very quickly. My release should not be looked at as a major breakthrough for democracy. For all the people in Burma to enjoy basic freedom – that would be the major breakthrough.”
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won Myanmar’s last general election in 1990. The junta refused to recognise the result. It placed her under house arrest for six years, released her in 1995, then rearrested her in September 2000 as she tried to board a train to Mandalay.
After months of secret negotiations, the junta has released her again – a crucial step towards ending Myanmar’s pariah status in the world. It took the unusual step of inviting journalists to Rangoon and even sent workmen to fill in the potholes on the road leading to Suu Kyi’s lakeside villa.
Until the last moment there were suspicions that the deal to free Suu Kyi had fallen through. “There is too much speculation going on,” Lieutenant Su, a spokesperson for Myanmar’s military intelligence bureau, told me, when asked what was happening. The sticking point appeared to be the conditions attached to Suu Kyi’s release – whether, for example, she would be free to travel – and the fate of hundreds of political prisoners belonging to her NLD party.
The real issue for Myanmar, though, is not just her release, but what happens next. There are few signs that the triumvirate of generals who runs Myanmar have any intention of relinquishing power. The country’s last democratic government was toppled in a coup in 1962. “The generals realise they are in a hole and have to do something. They want to get out of the hole and hang on to power at the same time,” one Rangoon-based observer said. “If everything went really well, we’re looking at five years minimum before any kind of democratic government could be in place. There needs to be a Constitution and there need to be fresh elections.”
This is the best-case scenario. More probably Myanmar’s leading general, Than Shwe, will try to offer a limited degree of political reform – in return for an end to the international sanctions that have turned the country into a basket case. It is too early to say whether Britain and other donor nations will play ball, but they are likely to be suspicious of any arrangement that leaves the men in green uniforms in power.
It would be nice to think that the State Peace and Development Council – the Orwellian title by which Myanmar’s ruling junta describes itself – would be prepared to step aside and invite Suu Kyi to head an interim administration. Dictators, however, do not generally behave that way (witness, for example, how General Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan tried to legitimise his rule by holding a referendum in which he was the only candidate).
And in Myanmar, moreover, the ruling generals appear to have a limitless appetite for intrigue – as well as a deep-rooted suspicion of foreigners and foreignness. “They are a pretty xenophobic bunch. They are not educated. They have closed minds,” one Western official lamented.
By a strange twist of fate Myanmar’s former dictator, Ne Win, is currently under house arrest at his palatial home on the opposite side of the lake from Suu Kyi, whom he imprisoned. His family is accused of having plotted a coup against the military leadership in March. The case against the three grandsons of his favourite daughter appears to have as much to do with murky business dealings as politics – and also involves an astrologer who apparently tried to perform black magic against the family’s foes.
The long-suffering Myanmar people and the rest of the world will have to wait to see what role Suu Kyi is allowed to play in the next few months. Now 56, a widow and with a grandchild she has scarcely known, Suu Kyi has sacrificed an extraordinary amount. Her cause remains elusive, but for how much longer?