Myanmar in 2010: The Elections Year and Beyond

Summary

One need not have been a soothsayer and, according to Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy, go to a very low circle of hell to predict that 2010 would be the year of elections, that all attention internally in Myanmar would be directed towards that end, and this concentration would also affect foreign relations. At the same time, no fortune teller would have been required, beyond picking the date of the elections themselves, to determine that minority issues would profoundly influence the future, as they have done since independence in 1948, and that 2010 would not witness resolution of these to-date intractable problems.

The 7 November 2010 elections may have determined the composition of the new government, but they did not change, and specifically were not intended to change, the distribution of effective power, which still rests with the Tatmadaw (armed forces), and is likely to do so into the indefinite future. The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) efforts — ineffectual at best — to assuage the minorities are unlikely to succeed for several reasons. The minorities have wanted some form of federal system, and many groups have formulated draft constitutions (illegally under Myanmar law and thus they were forced to do so outside the country) for their seven constituent states that incorporated elements of some such preferred system. To the military, however, federalism has been anathema since Ne Win declared it so in 1962. He considered it the first step toward secession, against which the military has always fought since independence. The government's Border Guard Force concept (see below) has exacerbated tensions; it would result in the effective castration of the ceasefire military of key ethnic groups, and thus has been resisted. It is a subject with which the new government in 2011 will have to deal, and there are fears it may try to do so through military force. The 25 per cent active-duty military in the bicameral national legislative, and even in local ones, prompt questions from the minorities that their rights will not be adequately protected.