Myanmar's generals dig in their heels

By Lee Kim Chew

YANGON: Myanmar is a fretful nation awaiting change. The military government wants to change its people. Its people want to change the government. Strangely, in this predominantly Buddhist country, famed for its 2,500-year-old Shwedagon Pagoda and its spiritualism, there is no middle ground in the political divide.

Much maligned, much unappreciated, much unloved, the ruling generals march to their own drumbeat, oblivious to the outside world. Secretive and largely inaccessible, they have worked for years, with no end in sight, on a new charter that will entrench their power.

They are writing for themselves a lead role when military involvement in politics is out of tune with the times. Indonesia's military is taking its first steps out of politics, but Myanmar's entrenched generals are digging in.

Foreign Minister Win Aung says: "We are an interim government. We are in transition to form a new democratic state." But the generals have set no date to transfer political power to civilians. Would they?

"That's a fair question," says Lt.Col. Hla Min, the government spokesman, as he seeks to explain. "We have been inescapably stuck" in constitutional talks.

He asserts that the generals are soldiers, not politicians, and that they will do what they must, as soldiers, to keep the country intact. Myanmar has fought many ethnic insurgency wars over the past 50 years, he adds.

The signs are that the generals are in for a long stay. Former President Soeharto's Indonesia was once a model for Myanmar's generals. The picture has changed somewhat with his fall, East Timor's independence vote and the Indonesian military's retreat from politics.

The Myanmar generals also took note of Yugoslavia's disintegration and South Korea's prosecution of two former presidents for corruption and abuse of power. Now Soeharto and his generals are being called to account.

All this makes the regime even more jittery about yielding power to civilians. To the generals, their chief opponent, Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, is a traitor who consorts with Western countries to undermine Myanmar's national interests.

Their idea of democratic change is to enshrine the military's constitutional right to govern. Any other arrangement could be a mortal threat to their political dominance.

"Change means political suicide for the government," says businessman Sein Lwin, whose disaffection with the military regime has turned him into a disbeliever of everything the government does.

"In Myanmar, the laws are elastic. The generals do what they like, and those who oppose them suffer terribly for it."

For all his suppressed anger, there is a fatalistic outlook that is rooted in the belief in reincarnation.

"People are content with what they have. The present conditions have something to do with their previous lives. So they accept their fates," he says.

It is common practice in Myanmar to consult astrologers and believe in auspicious dates. On the calendar, 8-8-88 (Aug. 8, 1988) marks the aborted nationwide revolt against military rule. People had hoped for radical change on 9-9-99. It did not happen.

"Confront the generals openly? They have guns. We don't. In the past, blood was shed when that happened. We want change, but peaceful change," Sein Lwin pleads.

Them and us. Myanmar's current rulers are deeply estranged from their own people, more so after they disavowed the sweeping victory of the National League for Democracy (NLD), Suu Kyi's party, in the 1990 elections.

The government tries hard, but it seems incapable of winning popular support for whatever good it does.

The people turn a deaf ear to its entreaties. "It's a lot of bull, what they say on television and in the newspaper," says a former civil servant. "Even its own supporters do not believe the propaganda."

There is a credibility gap. Public cynicism and the military's hard line against its political opponents diminish whatever little hope there is of peaceful political change.

Driven to desperation, some dissidents abroad have joined forces with Karen rebels and resorted to violence. Last October, they hijacked the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok. Their seizure of a provincial hospital in Thailand in January ended in disaster.

Suu Kyi, a proponent of non-violent change, eschews the use of force. She fights an uphill battle. Military intelligence agents shadow her everywhere she goes.

This restricts her movements, even though she is allowed to go where she wants in the capital Yangon, but not beyond, since her release from house arrest in 1995.

University Avenue, which leads to her house, once the venue of her popular weekend rallies, is still blocked by troops. Outside her party's headquarters are swarms of intelligence agents. They take pictures of her visitors.

Last month, about 40 NLD youths were arrested for meeting to reorganize the party's youth wing. Arbitrary arrest, no access to lawyers, no open court, long jail sentences -- this is what the pro-democracy activists face, says NLD vice-chairman Tin Oo. "This is a police state."

NLD members throughout the country are forced to resign en masse or they get harassed and suffer retribution. Suu Kyi and the other NLD leaders doggedly keep the faith alive by staying busy with party work. She meets her supporters regularly.

The NLD headquarters in Yangon is like a beehive. The activists attend pep talks, never mind the spooks among them. Each week, the party's women's wing hands out vitamins, iodised salt and sugar to poor children.

The generals dismiss Suu Kyi, daughter of the country's independence hero Aung San, as an intransigent alien, and would dearly love to see her leave Myanmar. But she will not because the NLD will lose its most popular leader without her.

Says tour operator Naing Naing: "She's our only hope. Without her, the NLD is nothing.

"There has been change in other countries. In Indonesia, the military has been pushed aside. Thailand, South Korea and Taiwan were once ruled by the military. One day, Myanmar will change too."

But businessman Aung Thien is not so sure. He says: "People in Myanmar have been talking about change since 1988. But little has changed. The military will do everything to preserve its power. In fact, things have got worse."

As it is, the generals are doing all they can to emasculate the NLD. Vice-chairman Tin Oo complains: "Ours is a registered party but we have to carry out our activities like an underground organization, because of the constant harassment and intimidation of NLD members."

Some 40 to 45 NLD MPs who were elected in the 1990 election are still in prison. The others who were freed had been given conditional releases. Others were put in "guest houses" or forced to resign from the party. NLD MPs are not allowed to meet their constituents.

The courts hand down heavy jail sentences for small political infractions routinely. Students shouting anti-government slogans in the streets have been given 15-year jail terms.

"We have to make an example of them," says Lt. Col. Hla Min.

The universities, hotbeds of dissent, have stayed closed for years now. Some of the technical colleges have been moved out of the capital, their campuses broken up and the students dispersed.

Students who want to sit for university examinations are vetted in a suitability test to determine if they, or any members of their families, are connected in any way with the political opposition.

The writer is chief regional correspondent of the Singapore- based The Strait Times daily.

-- The Strait Times/Asia News Network