P Kharel

Myanmar is once more under military rule, with State Counsellor and Foreign Minister since 2016 Aung San Suu Kyi detained along with hundreds of members of parliament and prominent civilians. The detainees are accused of fraudulent elections, in which the National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide majority. Suu Kyi is held for illegal possession of walkie-talkie and President Win Mint is charged with breaching coronavirus regulations by meeting people during campaign programmes.
Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing is the ruler of the new dispensation, at least during the year-long state of emergency declared by the coup leaders. Time will tell how long this lasts and what political course follows. Given China and Russia’s call for lifting Suu Kyi’s detention, the NLD leader could be freed from house arrest earlier than initially thought. The army rule might not mirror the type of democracy defined, detailed and interpreted by the West, even as many scholars and academics announce the beginnings of democracy’s decline worldwide. They point out at the growing dissatisfaction and distrust in the prevailing political practices.
Why the growing distrust? One of the biggest factors is the manner in which the so-called liberal democracies unleashed different strokes for different folks, embracing authoritarians and dictators who serve their economic and other strategic interests. The early morning February 1 military takeover in Myanmar - the third in six decades - not only underscores half a century of military rule since the 1962 coup led by Ne Win but also illustrates the clash entailed by an emerging new world order. Just as the first two decades showed ample signs of impending shift in power equations, the world will witness tectonic changes in this sphere by the 2030s. Last week’s event in Myanmar reiterates this.

Contrasting reactions
The United States and China are divided in their responses to the army takeover in Myanmar, where the military declared a year-long state of emergency. Washington condemned the change and called for honouring the popular will expressed in the November 8 elections. Beijing has “noted” the development and expressed the hope that “all sides in Myanmar can appropriately handle their differences under the constitution and legal framework and safeguard political and social stability.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants the 1991 Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi released from “unlawful” detention. The Independent newspaper warned Suu Kyi of losing sympathy in the West and “she only has herself to blame”. Now deposed and placed under house arrest, in a reminiscence of similar detention for 15 years until her release in 2010, Suu Kyi has disappointed many of her earlier supporters in the West. On her current detention, The Independent newspaper is bitter: “As the old saying goes, those who try to ride a tiger end up inside it.”
However, the 75-year-old widow of a British national and whose two children are British citizens, might still have some sympathy overseas. Her reputation in the West suffered after she defended her country’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, where Myanmar rulers face charges of genocide. That her country of 54.5 million did not face sanctions from the European Union and the US is something many other leaders would have suffered is a testimony of this factor.
Reactions from South Asian governments, including India, have been not much different from the vast majority of their other counterparts across the world. They have generally focused on stability and need for resolving internal issues through early dialogue. Bangladesh calls for Myanmar’s peace and stability as well as “genuine” efforts at pacing up the process of voluntary repatriation of Rohingya refugees. The 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis occurred with the displacement of Muslims and other minorities from Myanmar’s Arrakkan and Rakhine states. The “stateless entities”, mostly Muslim and Hindu, landed in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, among other countries.
With Suu Kyi as its General Secretary, the NLD won more than 80 per cent of the seats in the 1990 parliament. The military government, however, refused to hand over power. In 2016, the party was tossed onto the seat of popular power but not without cozying up with the military-the key source behind the existing constitution. The youngest daughter of Aung San, hailed as Father of the Nation, Suu Kyi’s inspiring role in the August 8, 1988 movement for democracy, popularly known as the 8888 uprising, gave her nationwide popularity. Her mother, Khin Kyi, a prominent political figure, served as Myanmar’s ambassador to India and Nepal in 1960. As a result, Suu Kyi visited Nepal.
Placed under house arrest for almost 15 years between 1989 and 2010, Suu Kyi became Myanmar’s most prominent opposition leader. When the then internationally influential Time magazine, in 1999, described her as Mahatma Gandhi’s spiritual heir to non-violence, she drew worldwide elite attention that gave an additional boost to her political profile at home.

Admitted expediency
Suu Kyi’s admission, in 2007, that her approach to non-violence was a strategic expediency must have jolted the Nobel Peace committee into a new insight—and perhaps acute discomfort. She said: “I do not hold to non-violence for moral reasons, but for political and practical reasons.” Giving continuity to a similar approach to her politics, she agreed to the junta-inspired constitution, which reserves a quarter of parliamentary seats and three key ministerial portfolios (Home Affairs, Border Affairs, and Defence). In the 2012 by-elections, her party won 43 of the 45 seats at stake.
NLD had boycotted the 2010 general elections, which gave a cakewalk for the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party to win a landslide majority. In the 2015 general elections, NLD rode the crest of popularity to secure 86 per cent of the contested seats. US President Barack Obama visited Myanmar twice and greeted his host, the junta-backed Thein Sein, in 2012 and 2014, that is two years before Suu Kyi became the de facto prime minister following the 2016 general elections. Many internationally recognised as democratically elected governments are not paid such visits. Nepal, for example.
But leaders emerging from military coups or seriously accused of vote fraud are paid American presidential courtesies. Oil-rich regimes in West Asia are close Western allies without democratic credentials while severe criticism and sanctions are reserved for Venezuela and even a NATO member like Turkey. In this connection, Egypt and Thailand are not the only countries whose relations with the US reiterate the practice of political convenience more than anything else.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)