🇲🇲 The people push back

By comparing, they realized that Burmese were quick to denounce Monday’s coup in drove, despite the more ruthless reputation of the Burmese military generals in the past compared to Thai generals like Prayut. Politicians, academics, doctors, nurses, stars, models and flight attendants protested while back in Thailand, after the May 2014 coup, too few people were willing to come out publicly to take a stance to denounce the coup led by Gen Prayut.

One acerbic and popular motto in Thai language spreading on social media since the latest coup in Myanmar went like: “If Thais don’t fight we will remain like slaves. If Burmese don’t fight they will remain like Thais.”

This crisis was probably inevitable given the cohabitation the 2008 Constitution imposes upon political and personal foes. Its implementation, which began after a rigged election in 2010, led to a significant policy arena opening up to civilian and elected officials for the first time in decades. It also carved out a place for the military in politics — the Tatmadaw were granted a quarter of legislative seats, security-related cabinet portfolios and autonomy in all intra-military affairs.

“I worry every night, ‘who will take me?’” Kyaw Thu Win said, noting that some of his friends have already been arrested, including Saw Khwar Phoe, an ethnic Karen reggae singer who was taken into custody the day of the coup.

As shock gives way to anger, younger people in Myanmar like Kyaw Thu Win are driving a growing opposition to the junta that could erupt into mass demonstrations.

As of today, a large portion of staff are refusing to go to work at 91 state hospitals and more than two dozen medical colleges and government health departments in close to 80 towns across Myanmar, according to the campaign’s Facebook page, which has more than 200,000 followers. They have been joined in their campaign by state schoolteachers from seven education unions, staff at state carrier Myanmar National Airlines, and civil servants at a growing number of government departments.

All participants in the campaign who spoke to Frontier requested anonymity, fearing reprisals from the government.

A doctor who is one of the leaders of the campaign, whose members have signalled their participation by pinning red ribbons to their chests, told Frontier that striking nurses are facing some of the worst pressure from their bosses.

Expectations for Myanmar have often looked something like the South Africa model. There, F.W. de Klerk, the last apartheid-era ruler, pressured whites to accept the new democratic order. In return, Nelson Mandela, the first fully democratic president, protected white interests, ensuring broad buy-in from the country’s stakeholders.

It’s a model with uncomfortable trade-offs and generational timelines. In Chile, junta leaders surrendered power in exchange for lifelong privileges and protections, many of which were only rolled back 30 years later.

“Thein Sein actually did, early on, act as a kind of de Klerk,” said Aaron Connelly, a Singapore-based scholar at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, referring to the Myanmar junta leader who voluntarily handed off power in 2011. “But Aung San Suu Kyi did not act as a kind of Mandela. And so the partnership that she had an opportunity to forge with Thein Sein never eventuated.”

The commander in chief of defense services invoked powers based on Section 417 of the 2008 military-drafted constitution that enables the holder of his office to wrest full legal, judicial and executive power to create an instant dictatorship.

Dubbed the "stiletto coup" for its ungentlemanly, knife-in-the-ribs nature, Min Aung Hlaing's putsch was bloodless — at least in the first few days — compared to the last one on Sept. 18, 1988. That left an estimated 500 dead on the streets following six weeks of pro-democracy protests in which another 3,000 people were killed nationwide.

The events of 2015 dramatically changed the political context. The NLD won the election, forming government for the first time and holding a majority in parliament, despite the 25% of seats constitutionally reserved for military officers. The loss was felt sorely by the military-backed political party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, or USDP.

The NLD went into government with their eyes wide open as to the risks, personal and political. Many, after all, had been political prisoners themselves.

The NLD faced hostility from the outset. The NLD created the Office of State Councillor, a position specifically for Aung San Suu Kyi in light of her inability to become president. This was strongly opposed by military members of parliament who refused to vote on the legislative proposal.

Things became very serious for the NLD in 2017, when prominent lawyer and legal advisor to the NLD, U Ko Ni, was assassinated in broad daylight at Yangon International Airport. The risks of opposing the military-created political regime by advocating reform of the constitution were suddenly very clear.

It is difficult to determine whether the claims of electoral fraud loom larger than the behind-the-scenes power struggle between the Commander-in-Chief and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, or if they were merely a pretext for the military coup. Credible sources have told the author that the military took issue with Aung San Suu Kyi’s creation of the State Counsellor position in 2016 as a convenient workaround since she is constitutionally barred from holding the office of president due to her foreign spouse and two children. Other Myanmar experts speculate that Min Aung Hlaing may have held personal ambitions to become president himself. The Senior General is legally required to retire from the role of Commander-in-Chief when he turns 65 in July.