Myanmar Democratization Ahead

Political Perspective and Recommendation

 Presented by Bo Kaung

 In this part, we would like to discuss something about the key players and groups of Myanmar political arena, their interest and values and, the dynamic of their relationships with each other are, and resources they possess. We choose the following key players and groups for this part discussion-

·         The government

·         The ruling party

·         The main opposition party

·         The defense services, and

·         Armed ethnic groups and other ethnic based political parties.

 

Government

            The government took the power after the 2010 controversial election victory. The president announced his road map and claimed good governance and clean government in his inauguration speech. Although most of the cabinet members are political elites of the previous regime, legitimacy of the government could be sought by the election. The government can implement democratic liberalization within very short time not because of the united strength of the cabinet members but because of the charismatic of the President U Thein Sein. The international community including the United States, European Union recognized the reform tasks of the government and most of the economic and other sanctions have been lifted, and resumed diplomatic relations. Those support encouraged the reformation process. The important thing the government could do is carrying out the separation and sharing of power among and between the executive, legislature and judicial entities, as well as the Union, Regions, States and local governing bodies.

            The challenging issue for the government is inefficient and corruption rooted bureaucracy. The bureaucratic personnel are very used to orders and instructions rather than rules and regulations. This becomes a barrier to the government reform tasks. Moreover, the government has to remedy the elements that have been wrong in the previous regime, and it becomes a big burden for the current government, and the development can not be seen as it assumes to be.

 

          We have some recommendation for the government. In our opinion, the government should focus on implementing the projects with obvious progress. For a transition government, there will be many things to do. The long-term development of the country is very good, but, we suppose that the motivation of the people are very important as well. Some long-term projects such as poverty eradication project will not produce the result very vividly and that sort of project can discourage the people. Therefore, the government should focus more on short-term projects with prominent outcomes.

            We also would like to suggest the government, especially the President, to prosecute the government officials who committed corruption, and let the people know the action of the government transparently because those actions can stop corruption to some extent.

            We appreciate the government political tolerance which could never be seen in the previous regime. Therefore, we encourage the government to keep the political tolerance because without which it would be hard to build the mutual trust with the oppositions, other political institutions and other stakeholders. 

Ruling Party

            The ruling party, Union Development and Solidarity Party, was born among the military of Myanmar. However, it now becomes a separate body. The ruling party won a landslide victory in the 2010 elections and they can occupy the majority seats of the parliament. Most of them are political elites in the former regime, so they have governing experience and relatively strong human resources. Now the image of USDP becomes faded for several reasons. And if they are lucky, they might be a strong opposition of the next government.

  

          The ruling party should focus on institutionalization which means they should set up a long-term human capital plan so that they have proper strength for leading the nation in the future. Moreover, they should remedy the errors and mistakes they have committed in the former regime and in this regime so that they regain their good reputation. The most important thing for them is to be ready to stand as a strong opposition in the next term.

Main Opposition

            The main opposition party of Myanmar, Nation League for Democracy (NLD), is leaded by the worldwide popular leader Daw Aung Sann Suu Kyi. For the time being, they are launching a campaign for constitutional amendment. In the previous by-election campaign, they promised the people to implement three orientation: rule of law, national reconciliation and constitutional amendment. However, NLD is supposed to be forgotten the first two promises and they now target only to amend the constitution. There are arguments that NLD ignores the circumstance of the situation and claims theoretical liberal democracy too much. In our opinion, NLD should has mobilized the other small political parties.

 

          We have some recommendation for NLD. The party seems rely too much on the Charismatic of the leader, Daw Aung Sann Suu Kyi. It is, we do not think, a good potential for the future. Moreover, the party should carefully choose the strategy for its campaign. They should not waste the power of the people for less result. Rather, they should focus on the election campaign for the 2015 elections. This time, they should be ready for the next term of the government. In addition, they should reveal their road map on political, economic, social, environmental and foreign relations so that the people can guess the future of the nation.

 

Defence Services

            The Defence Services (Tatmadaw) is the sole patriotic defence force in Myanmar. The Commander-in-Chief is the Supreme Commander of all the armed forces in the Union. The Tatmadaw is mainly responsible for safeguarding the constitution. Its concern is national stability and security like other countries’ army. For the time being, the Tatmadaw has a good relationship with the government, but it has no direct relationship with other political parties. 

          We would recommend the Tatmadaw to keep safeguarding the constitution in the parliaments, and keep staying away from party politics. The Tatmadaw should focus on the welfare of the basic level personnel. If they could take the advantage of the strength of newer generation, it would be a great support for the building of strong and competence Defence Services. Moreover, they should deal more public relations. 

Armed Ethnic Groups and Other Ethnic Based Political Parties

            There are many ethnic based political parties as well as armed ethnic groups in Myanmar. The similar claim they are doing now is federalism and rights of self-determination. New political parties are registering and the peace talk with the armed groups is going on.

            We would like to suggest that the armed ethnic group should agree on ceasefire in order to start political negotiation because the political dialogue would be hard to succeed without being ceasefire.  Ceasefire will be a great support for mutual trust building among the government and the armed groups.  Moreover, they should have a single voice when they claim their rights. 

Conclusion

          These are the view of the experts but our view is hard to say ultimately true. We made this policy recommendation project based on the lectures of Professor Nigel Gould Davies, some academic articles and the data available. In our opinion, the person who knows Myanmar current situation very well is Myanmar people and the key players of Myanmar. We believe that this small paper can assist the stakeholders of Myanmar in building the Democratic Nation.

The project was presented to the Professor and the colleagues of International Center of Excellence (ICoE) at Yangon University on 11^th June 2014.