Myanmar 2015: Political turning point, economic and social challenges

The year 2015 will be remembered as a watershed in the political evolution of Myanmar. After 5 years of semi-civilian government, the country was allowed to hold free elections for a new national parliament and regional assemblies. In No-vember, the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi won by a landslide obtaining almost 80% of votes throughout the country, including in ethnic states in which it scored much better than expected. The incumbent Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) – the party created by the army – suf-fered a crushing defeat: it got only 8% of the votes, while many party leaders had hoped it would get up to one third of the national popular vote. The scale of the NLD victory will allow it to choose the new president and to form the new go-vernment. However, the constitution approved by the outgoing military regime has created a number of important obstacles to real regime change. First, the Tatmadaw (the army) will continue to nominate 25% of parliamentary members and will have the power to veto constitutional changes. Second, the Tatmadaw will continue to appoint the ministers of Defence, Border Affairs and Home Affairs. This implies that the army will maintain control of the police as well as of the General Admini-stration Department, which forms the backbone of the administration at the local level. Third, a clause in the constitution prevents the election of Aung San Suu Kyi to the presidency, thus confronting the NLD with two equally risky choices, ei-ther selecting a non-entity as president, potentially damaging the reputation of the NLD, or endangering the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi by choosing a capable politician for the state’s highest political office. The limits imposed to far-reaching political change help to explain why the army accepted the transition and immedia-tely recognized the electoral results. The complexity of the political and institutional transition is bound to cause con-tinuing difficulties in addressing the main national challenges. A ceasefire with eight ethnic armies reached in October 2015 was an important result, but the ethnic conflict remains rampant. Political and ethnic tensions in Rakhine state between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minorities have become particularly severe, and the dramatic conditions of the Rohingya produced an international crisis in spring 2015. To a very large extent, these ethnic conflicts are the result of both the conditions of poverty in which the large majority of the population live and the political, cultural and economic suppression of ethnic minorities since national independence.

Pietro Masina | University of Naples «L’Orientale» | pmasina@unior.it