28 December 2014
Time to put the pressure on Burma to allow Aung San Suu Kyi to play the role for which she is destined
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, 13 December 2014. Photograph: Lynn Bo Bo/EPA
Burma’s reforms have been applauded and encouraged by western countries. But whether these reforms will be taken to the point where the rule of law is fully consolidated, and a solidly based democratic state has emerged, very much hangs in the balance. The next few weeks are critical. During that time, probably by the end of February at the latest, the Burmese government is due to give its response to a range of options put before it by a special constitutional committee.
This will set the terms under which the country’s next elections will be held in late 2015, but it will also shape Burmese politics for years to come. According to what is decided, Burmese reform will go down as a return to the democratic path abandoned when the military seized power a half-century ago, as a highly unsatisfactory halfway house between military and civilian rule, or, worse, as a fraud in which military dominance will be maintained behind a civilian screen.
The role of Aung San Suu Kyi is unavoidably the central issue. She is a politician who could play the part in Burma which Nelson Mandela played in South Africa and which Andrei Sakharov could perhaps have played in Russia had not his death removed him from the scene – figures so widely trusted and respected that all can rally to their leadership. Not many countries with difficult histories are lucky enough to have such a leader in waiting, and yet the Burmese constitution, as it is today, lays down that she cannot stand for president in the coming election because her two children have married foreigners, a provision expressly inserted to keep her out.
The all too obvious danger is that the Burmese military, fearful of losing its privileges, hidebound by a narrow view of national security, and feeling it has already achieved its aim of balancing strong Chinese influence by bringing other countries into play, will sideline or discard her. She could be lost to Burma, as her father was before her, and that would be a tragedy, for her and for her country. None of this means that she is without fault or that, if she attained the presidency, everything would immediately be harmonious and wonderful. Yet she represents Burma’s best chance of a good future. It is now inane for outsiders to say the regime has made some steps in the right direction. The government has had more than enough credit for those limited changes and needs to be pressed to go much, much further. If it maintains the ban, that should be a red line for western countries, and for other states which may have less pronounced views on democracy but nevertheless have an interest in Burma’s stability.
But international pressure on Burma seems to have slackened rather than increased. It is true there have been some good things done, the release of political prisoners, the lifting of the bar on public assemblies, and the reappearance of independent newspapers among them. Yet this sits alongside a system in which soldiers, by law, have 25% of the seats in parliament, where they vote as a bloc and have a virtual veto on constitutional amendments, while key ministries are reserved for serving officers. In no other country in the world is military control entrenched in such a way. It is profoundly undemocratic and it is not popular in Burma, where five million people have signed a petition calling for it to be ended.
It is also true that Burma’s economy, helped by the partial lifting of sanctions and an inflow of foreign investment, is doing a lot better. Many ordinary Burmese are leading better lives, and many already rich Burmese, most of them with military connections, are getting richer. That, in a sense, is the problem. The Burmese regime has been rewarded for reform before it has delivered it, or, at least, before it has delivered it in full measure. Western sanctions have been lifted or softened. Western leaders, notably Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – who was most recently in Burma in October for a summit meeting of the United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – have begun to pay regular, if still wary, court. But, as Aung San Suu Kyi said in a recent interview, western countries are acting as if reform were an accomplished fact rather than very much still unfinished business. With so little time left, that should now change.
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