Aung San Suu Kyi

Helia Ighani is the assistant director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Center for Preventive Action. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won a majority of the votes after a landslide election in November 2015, becoming the first fully civilian-led government in Myanmar’s history. Once in power in April 2016, the NLD government released nearly two hundred political prisoners detained by the former military junta government, demonstrating Suu Kyi’s commitment to democratizing the country. However, the new NLD government has not yet attempted to reconcile animosity among Myanmar’s various ethnic groups—in particular, its Rohingya population. Up to 1.1 million Rohingya live in Myanmar, facing serious human rights violations, and thousands have been displaced due to violence with Buddhist nationalists (see CFR’s Global Conflict Tracker for an overview of the sectarian violence in Myanmar). Many have criticized Suu Kyi for refusing to touch the Rohingya issue, including the Dalai Lama. A new Center for Preventive Action (CPA) report, Securing a Democratic Future for Myanmar, highlights this concerns and the importance of U.S. involvement in the country’s transition to democracy. Priscilla A. Clapp, the former chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar and senior advisor to the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Asia Society, argues that reforms over the past five years have transformed Myanmar “from a country of little strategic interest to the United States into one that promises substantial benefit to core U.S. interests in Southeast Asia and beyond.” Yet, as the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Myanmar Derek Mitchell expressed at a recent CPA event, the “deep reservoir of mistrust in the country must be overcome,” regarding the reconciliation of the recognized 135 ethnic minorities in Myanmar and the “very delicate issue” of the Rohingya minority. Washington has already begun to change its tone on Myanmar. The new U.S. ambassador to Myanmar Scot Marciel said he will continue to use “Rohingya”—considered a controversial term by many hardline Buddhists who refer to the unrecognized population as “Bengali”—when referring to the large Muslim community in Myanmar, despite being asked by the government to not bring up the issue. While Washington hinted that it is considering reversing its sanctions policy toward Myanmar, it is counting on the new government to improve human rights conditions. The Obama administration will decide on whether to continue the sanctions when the underlying legal basis for the program expires next week. Clapp details policy options for facilitating a democratic transition with the NLD government, including U.S. policy recommendations relating to human rights conditions and sanctions on Myanmar. Over the coming year, she recommends that the United States should: • Assist with the establishment of a reconciliation government. • Provide assistance for economic development and conflict mediation in Rakhine State and encourage the new government to give legal status to the Rohingya minority. • Revise the legal structure of remaining sanctions and begin to sunset sanctions specific to Myanmar. • In consultation with the NLD, develop a strategy to expand dialogue with Myanmar’s military.   In the long term, she encourages the United States to: • Expand the purview of U.S. assistance to include capacity-building for government institutions. • Help rebuild the justice system. • Promote economic development at the state level to consolidate peace with ethnic minorities. • Lead a regional effort to find a humane solution to Rohingya statelessness and legal status in neighboring countries. • Promote Myanmar’s political and economic integration into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).   Read Securing a Democratic Future for Myanmar to get Clapp’s full analysis and learn more about Myanmar’s transition to democracy.

The expectations for Myanmar’s new, National League for Democracy (NLD)-led government are almost impossibly high. After five decades under military or quasi-military rule, many Myanmar citizens expect the NLD government to make a decisive break with the country’s authoritarian past, while also promoting greater equality---and reforming the economy enough to foster stable growth that benefits more than just Myanmar’s elites. All these expectations are being heaped on a government led by ministers who, because of the country’s bleak political past, have little or no experience in governance and administration, and who belong to a political party organized around the dominating figure of Aung San Suu Kyi. The fact that the armed forces have little intention of simply receding from politics, a position reiterated by the head of the military on Armed Forces Day last month, only further complicates the NLD’s ability to govern. Although there are regional examples of countries, like Indonesia, where the armed forces have eventually been maneuvered out of politics, there are also many Southeast Asian examples, as like neighboring Thailand, where the generals never really returned to the barracks. Some younger NLD members worry too, about Suu Kyi’s dominance---she has not only taken two ministerial positions but also a newly created position as minister counselor, making her a de facto head of state. The combination of portfolios held by the Nobel laureate, and the weak popular credentials of many other ministers, gives Suu Kyi enormous power in the policymaking process. In addition, the creation of the minister counselor position was essentially rammed through the lower house, worrying some MPs about the NLD’s commitment to seriously debating legislation. Since taking office roughly two weeks ago, the new Myanmar government has made some positive moves. It has released most of the country’s remaining political prisoners, or announced plans to pardon them, a critical symbol that the new government will further relax freedom of expression and protest. Yet other signs from the new government are more worrying, if perhaps predictable. The NLD’s economic and financial platform remains muddled, with party insiders suggesting that the senior leadership has no clear plan for how to continue Myanmar’s economic reforms while tweaking them to address the problem of growing inequality. What’s more, during the campaign season last year, Suu Kyi and other NLD leaders remained ominously quiet about the campaign of violence against Rohingya and other Muslims in Myanmar, a campaign that has decimated the Rohingya community. When Suu Kyi did talk to the press or the public about Buddhist-Muslim tensions, she tended to downplay them, telling reporters not to “exaggerate” the problems of the Rohingya. Shortly after the new government took office in late March, it announced that the spokesman for the former, Thein Sein government, Zaw Htay, would be retained and promoted. Zaw Htay is widely known in Myanmar for his inflammatory remarks about the Rohingya, including posting photos online that exacerbated tensions between Buddhists and Muslims, according to the Irrawaddy. Meanwhile, the new minister for religious affairs, Aung Ko (who does not come from the NLD), last week called Muslims “associate citizens,” implying that they did not deserve the same type of citizenship as Buddhists. Myanmar media also revealed that Aung Ko has held meetings with U Wirathu, the firebrand nationalist monk, who is infamous for his anti-Muslim rhetoric. Meanwhile, many other ministers in the new government appear unimpressive. In addition to concern about some ministers’ dubious degrees, many members of the Cabinet are close political allies of the former speaker of the lower house, Thura Shwe Mann. As the Irrawaddy has noted, many of these allies of Shwe Mann have alleged links with companies that, under the military regime, were close to the generals and accused of illegal activities like corruption and drug trafficking, among others.

Last week, Myanmar announced the first Cabinet proposed by its NLD-dominated government. Although a handful of important ministries, like defense, were reserved for the armed forces, the NLD took most of the other important posts. In fact, Suu Kyi herself decided to take four ministerial posts, including the foreign ministry. As is common in any country transitioning to democracy, the list of Cabinet members was a mixed bag---some clearly qualified politicians and experts with deep knowledge in their ministry’s areas combined with party loyalists with dubious qualifications. Certainly, several jobs went to highly qualified people. The proposed new Minister of Hotels and Tourism, for instance, will be Ohn Maung, a hotelier with some four decades of experience in the travel industry. His Inle Princess Resort has been recognized as one of the best-run and most socially responsible hotels in Myanmar. Nai Thet Lwin, the proposed new Ethnic Affairs minister, is a longtime leader of the Mon National Party and is well respected by many ethnic parties. However, the fact that Suu Kyi is taking four ministerial posts herself adds further weight to the idea that she intends to rule the NLD and the government---and thus Myanmar, even though she is constitutionally prohibited from taking the presidency. As a I noted in a previous post, it is too soon to determine whether new president Htin Kyaw will be a Suu Kyi puppet, as Suu Kyi clearly intends. Still, by amassing so much power within the Cabinet, Suu Kyi will have an even stronger hand to control the president and the party. The second critical takeaway from the list of proposed ministers is that the NLD does not seem to have effectively vetted many of its Cabinet picks. Perhaps this lack of vetting is unsurprising; the NLD is putting together its first cabinet in a country that last had a democratic government five decades ago. But the lack of vetting is troubling, especially for those who worry that the NLD’s inexperience in governing will hinder its ability to run the country in these critical next two or three years. According to reports in the New York Times and some Myanmar media, Kyaw Win, the proposed new finance minister, received his master’s degree and a doctorate from a “university” based in Pakistan that was actually a group of websites that provided fake diplomas. (Late last week, Kyaw Win admitted to local reporters that his degree in finance was indeed fake, although he still seems to be the leading contender for the ministerial post.) It seems likely that Kyaw Win was chosen for the job not for his credentials but because he had been a longtime NLD member and a trusted member of the NLD’s economic committee. His selection casts more doubt over the NLD’s direction on economic policy. Meanwhile, the man expected to be minister of commerce, Than Myint, has a degree from what the New York Times called an unaccredited correspondence school. Businesspeople in Myanmar cannot be reassured by fact that the NLD chose these men for Cabinet positions in areas as important as finance and commerce. The picks should give pause, in fact, to anyone following Myanmar’s bumpy transition.

Last November, Myanmar held its first truly free national elections in twenty-five years. In the months leading up to the vote, members of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), foreign diplomats, and many Myanmar voters worried that, no matter who actually received the most votes, the results would somehow be invalidated. After all, Myanmar’s military had ruled the country since 1962, when it first took power in a coup, and had only given way, in the early 2010s, to a civilian government that was led by a former top general, President Thein Sein. The military-installed government had written a constitution designed to bar the NLD’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, from ever winning the presidency, and the military had created a political party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), that would hold power in a civilian parliament. (Myanmar’s president is not directly elected, but instead chosen by members of parliament, and the military wrote a clause in the constitution barring anyone who had a foreign spouse, like Suu Kyi, from running for president.) In the run-up to the November election, the government had used all the powers of the state---state media, state funds for local projects, arrests and detentions of opposition political activists---to help the USDP win control of parliament and the provincial parliaments across Myanmar. The USDP did not even have to win a majority of seats to keep the army in power; the constitution reserved 25 percent of the seats in the lower house for military officers, so the USDP only had to win 25.1 percent of seats for the army and its allies to have de facto control. And in some respects, the civilian regime led by Thein Sein had taken strides toward effective governance, opening the country to foreign investment, restoring closer relations with leading democracies, opening up the local media environment, and freeing hundreds of political prisoners, including many members of the NLD. Just before Election Day, Thein Sein gave a speech in which he obliquely warned that if voters did not choose the USDP, Myanmar’s reforms could easily be endangered. Surely, most USDP officials felt, the Myanmar public, appreciative of Thein Sein’s reforms and scared of voting against the military’s favored party, would support the USDP. It didn’t happen. On Election Day, the NLD dominated contests for the national legislature and the provincial parliaments. The party won 86 percent of the seats contested in the national parliament, taking a majority of seats in the lower house of parliament, even with the military still being allotted 25 percent of seats. The NLD’s majority allowed it to choose Myanmar’s new president, Htin Kyaw. The NLD also won a majority of Myanmar’s provincial bodies. Many of the USDP’s most powerful politicians, who had been sitting in the lower house since the handover to civilian rule, were ousted. And unlike the last time Myanmar held free national elections, in 1990, the military appeared ready to respect the people’s wishes. In 1990, after the NLD had won 392 of the 492 parliamentary seats contested, the army refused to recognize the result, and simply continued running the country for another two decades. But this time around, Suu Kyi quickly met with the army leadership, and army chief pledged that the military would not intervene in the transition to a NLD-led government. Top leaders of the USDP echoed the army’s call for a calm transition, with USDP acting chairman U Htay Oo telling Burmese reporters, “USDP has lost to the NLD. We will accept this result.” As the results trickled in from Myanmar’s election commission, Myanmar citizens held a raucous, nearly nonstop party in front of the NLD’s headquarters in downtown Yangon. The foreign reaction to Myanmar’s election was, in some ways, even more euphoric. Obama administration officials I met in the weeks after the Myanmar election seemed almost giddy that the Southeast Asian nations, so long a byword for thuggish army rule, could actually now be led by the NLD. Myanmar’s amazing election was even more remarkable given that, in the countries surrounding it, like Thailand, Bangladesh, and Malaysia, democracy seemed to be going into reverse. Foreign media outlets, too, celebrated the election as a massive breakthrough. The Washington Post, whose editorial board had been known for its hard-nosed view on the Myanmar military regime, touted the elections as “a triumph of hope … a triumph for those who kept the flame [of freedom] alive.” For the White House, such celebrations were not surprising. The United States had been the most forceful advocate of economic sanctions against the junta until Barack Obama’s presidency. Many who served in the Obama administration considered rapprochement with Myanmar one of the biggest successes of Obama’s presidency. Hillary Clinton, who visited Myanmar as Secretary of State in 2011, and developed a personal bond with the NLD leader, used a whole chapter of her recent memoir, Hard Choices, to highlight Myanmar’s transition, and the U.S. role in it. Myanmar’s democratization reflects “the unique role the United States can and should play in the world as a champion of dignity and democracy,” Clinton wrote. It is “America at our best.” Now, the payoff of this revamped U.S. policy apparently had come. Myanmar would become a democracy, and perhaps in the future a rewritten constitution would allow Suu Kyi to become president. A democratic Myanmar would be peaceful and stable, an example to other countries in one of the most turbulent regions in the world. A NLD-led Myanmar would surely tilt toward the United States and American friends like India and Singapore, end Myanmar’s lingering civil conflicts, crack down on the trade in illegal narcotics, gems, and wildlife, and create an economic environment ripe for U.S. companies. This rosy narrative has more than a few holes in it. For more on my assessment of the administration’s Myanmar’s policy, see my new book review in the Washington Monthly.

Last week, Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party will control Myanmar’s next parliament, participated for the first time in the government’s ongoing peace negotiations with ethnic minority insurgencies. As the Associated Press reported, Suu Kyi declared that she would push for a complete peace accord, one that includes the insurgent groups that did not sign an initial peace framework last autumn. The National League for Democracy (NLD)’s leader’s participation in the peace negotiations has raised hopes that the government can reach a final, permanent resolution with the holdout militias. Some of the holdout insurgent groups may trust Suu Kyi and the NLD more than the previous government, which was dominated by former military men, including some who had led firefights against the ethnic armies. Suu Kyi now could take other steps to reassure ethnic minorities that their interests will be represented in an NLD-led government, and to promote peace deals with the holdout groups. The NLD swept an overwhelming majority of seats in the November general elections, leaving ethnic minority parties with few seats in parliament; most of the incoming NLD MPs, even those representing minority-dominated areas, will be ethnic Burmans (Bamars.) Suu Kyi and the NLD could assure ethnic minorities that the NLD will listen to their concerns by appointing ethnic minority politicians to positions in the incoming administration and the new Cabinet. Suu Kyi also could make clearer her vision of a future federal Myanmar. The ethnically and religiously diverse country can only be governed successfully under some form of federalism, as politicians from nearly every Myanmar party now recognize. As Kachin leader Tu Ja told The Irrawaddy last week, “We are heading toward a federal union. The president [Thein Sein] said it in his Independence Day speech recently. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has also mentioned this. The only question is what kind of federalism this is going to be.” Suu Kyi understandably wants to focus on achieving permanent peace deals first, since the most basic job of any government is to control its territory and have a monopoly on the use of force. But as Tu Ja notes, Suu Kyi and the NLD need to simultaneously offer some clearer hints about how a federal Myanmar would operate under their government. Yet a final, comprehensive peace deal may remain elusive. Some of the challenges to a nationwide, permanent peace deal remain so intractable that it is hard to understand how even a popular, popularly elected leader could address them. The United Wa State Amy (UWSA), the most powerful holdout group, has an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 men under arms, heavy weaponry, a powerful friendship with Chinese leaders in Yunnan province, and control of a de facto autonomous mini-state in northern Myanmar. According to many reports, the primarily ethnic Wa organization also has under its control one of the biggest opium and methamphetamine operations in the world. The UWSA has basically been let alone by the Myanmar army for two decades, and it runs most of the functions of a state in Wa-controlled areas in the north. If the UWSA were to sign a permanent peace deal, it probably would eventually have to give up its total control over the functions of a state, and it likely would eventually have to wean the area off of production of drugs, by far the biggest industry in Wa country. What financial incentives could the national government, and international donors, give the UWSA to eventually hand over control of Wa regions and give up its drug business? Even a gusher of foreign aid, and the promises of investment in Wa areas, probably would not bring as much revenue into the Wa region as drugs currently do. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the United Wa State Army’s representatives did not attend the meeting with Suu Kyi.