Democracy in Myanmar: Who care?

Democracy in Myanmar: Who care?

Amitav Acharya, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Singapore

A July 2005 agreement among the members of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that Myanmar would relinquish its
turn at the chairmanship has averted a major diplomatic crisis
for the organization. Western nations, including the United
States and the European Union, who attend the annual ASEAN
meetings as "dialog partners," had threatened to boycott the 2006
meeting if Myanmar was in the chair.

Founded in 1967, ASEAN now includes 10 countries of Southeast
Asia. Under its rotational leadership, Myanmar, which joined the
group in 1997, was due to assume the chairmanship of its Standing
Committee in 2006.

The Western dialog partners of ASEAN are protesting against
continued political repression and human rights abuses by the
Myanmarese regime, which has ruled the country since 1962. The
regime has refused to accept the result of the 1990 national
election, which was won by the opposition National League for
Democracy (NLD). The party leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has since
spent most of her time under detention.

By giving up its claim to lead ASEAN in 2006, the junta
managed to take the heat off the question of domestic reform. And
ASEAN avoided a Western boycott of its 2006 meeting. But without
more focused action by ASEAN and the international community to
move Myanmar towards democracy, the move will be little more than
ASEAN's traditional practice of sweeping problems under the
carpet.

The discussion in Laos was not about how to improve the
political situation in the country. The issue was Myanmar's
leadership, rather than membership in ASEAN. ASEAN has not made
Myanmar's continued membership of the association subject to
political reform.

ASEAN has been reluctant to push Myanmar towards political
reform out of deference to its doctrine of non-interference. The
Myanmarese junta has started drafting a new constitution, due to
be completed in 2007, which it says would lead to political
liberalization. Presumably, this would make Myanmar eligible to
assume the leadership in ASEAN.

ASEAN members agree and hope that this will be the case. But
its Western partners dismiss the constitution-drafting process.
Suu Kyi and her party have boycotted the National Convention
drafting the constitution, whose delegates were hand-picked and
tightly controlled by the junta. The Bush administration in May
2004 stated that because "Yangoon's constitutional convention has
not allowed for substantive dialog and the full participation of
all political groups, including the NLD, it lacks legitimacy." If
approved by a popular majority in the electorate in a free and
fair referendum -- which is by no means guaranteed -- the
constitution would still accord the military a privileged
position in the political system, including sole claim to the
presidency.

ASEAN's role in Myanmar has been very different from its role
in the Cambodia conflict during the 1980s, when it led efforts to
find a peaceful settlement to the dispute, which resulted in the
Paris Peace Agreement in 1991. That conflict was originally a
civil war, although it had been internationalized by Vietnamese
intervention and occupation of Cambodia. There has been no
outside intervention in Myanmar, which is one justification for
ASEAN's hands-off policy. But Myanmar has proven to be a major
embarrassment for ASEAN.

ASEAN's diplomatic options in dealing with Myanmar are limited
by intra-mural differences within the grouping over how to deal
with the junta. Some members -- Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines,
and Singapore -- are increasingly concerned about the group's
relationship with Western nations, if not its international
public reputation per se. Thus, these ASEAN countries want to see
the association play a role in nudging the junta to reform.
Others, like Vietnam, stick to the principle of non-interference,
and are worried about setting a precedent of allowing regionalist
pressure for domestic political reform -- a precedent that would
likely come back to haunt them.

ASEAN's capacity for inducing political reform in Myanmar is
also constrained by the fact that the junta has secured backing
from both China and India, its two most powerful neighbors,
playing them against one other. Hence, the junta can ignore any
demand for political change that ASEAN may bring to bear on it.

China and India are critical to any intervention by the
international community in Myanmar. But is the West really
interested in advancing political change in Myanmar? There is no
serious diplomatic effort ongoing today -- of the kind one finds
in Sri Lanka or Aceh -- that might help bring about political
reconciliation in Myanmar. The Bush administration snubbed ASEAN
by canceling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's attendance at
the Vientiane meeting. But this posturing was almost entirely
cost-free, thanks to good bilateral relations with key Asian
nations, as indicated by a separate Rice stopover in Bangkok
before the Vientiane meeting. Diplomatic snubs and economic
sanctions are no substitute for a policy of seeking a solution to
Myanmar's political woes.

Myanmar's strategic location or economic potential may be
apparent to India and China, but not to the US. Myanmar is not
regarded by the Bush administration as a terrorist haven,
although it claims to side with the US on the war on terror,
supposedly against extremist elements among its Rohingya Muslim
minority. When asked by the author as to why the US is not
actively seeking a role in the Myanmar problem, a senior official
in the first Bush administration replied that because there is no
significant domestic interest or constituency in the United
States pushing for such a role. The administration's democracy-
promotion agenda does not extend to Myanmar, despite the fact
that Secretary Rice named Myanmar as one of six "outposts of
tyranny" during her Senate confirmation hearing in January.

Yet, a diplomatic effort backed by the US and involving
Myanmar's giant Asian neighbors would be necessary and timely.
Denying Myanmar the chairmanship of ASEAN is good posturing, but
it does not advance the cause of democratic transformation in the
country. If the US could engage in six-party negotiations
involving China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea to deal with the
North Korea problem, why should it not encourage a similar move
involving China, India, and ASEAN to deal with the Myanmar issue?

The international community needs to prove that while taking a
moral high ground on Myanmar's crisis; it must also offer
concrete ideas and approaches to advance the democratization and
national reconciliation process beyond the current policy of
sanctions and boycott. A necessary step in that direction would
be a new diplomatic initiative to persuade the Yangoon regime to
broaden the constitution-drafting process -- with the
participation of freed opposition leaders and a firm time-table
for internationally-supervised elections. Such an initiative
could be spearheaded jointly by ASEAN, China and India, with the
backing of the US and the EU and other members of the
international community.

Ultimately, ASEAN must come out of its non-interference closet
and address the issue head-on. Otherwise, its hands-off approach
will continue to cloud its legitimacy and credibility as a
regional organization with a mandate for seeking "regional
solutions to regional problems."

Amitav Acharya is Deputy Director and Head of Research at the
Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological
University.