Posted By Min Zin
Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 4:09 PM
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When the news broke earlier this week that military
appointees in Parliament had nominated a new vice president, some media outlets
reported
that a new hardliner was replacing an old hardliner, while others confidently stated
that "yet another hardliner is being replaced by a reformist."
Let's start by unpacking the facts. Last week the Burmese government announced the resignation of the country's
first vice president due to "health reasons." An ex-general, Vice President Tin
Aung Myint Oo was known as a corrupt hardliner. The man likely to take his place,
Myit Swe, is also a former general as well as a member of the military-backed
Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) and chief minister of the
Rangoon division of the government.
Burma's next vice president has a close personal relationship with
former dictator Senior General Than Shwe that contributed to Myit Swe's
successful career in the military. Myint Swe was given the critical job
of
overseeing security in Rangoon, the former capital, in 2001. In the late
1990s,
he was brought in
to take over the position of general staff officer, a
powerful role in the War Office, which was then occupied by ex-Brigadier
General Thein Sein, the current president. (He's shown above earlier
this week, along with newly appointed U.S. Ambassador Derek Mitchell.)
When the former intelligence chief and
prime minister, Gen. Khin Nyunt, was purged in 2004, Myint Swe got the
job of restructuring the country‘s
intelligence agency.
According to Irrawaddy Magazine
(which last May accurately predicted Myint Swe's appointment as vice
president), Myint Swe was directly involved in the crackdown on the Buddhist
monk-led "Saffron Revolution" of 2007, which resulted in scores of deaths. Most
recently, Myint Swe has confronted local journalists working with exile media
outlets and reporting on the sectarian
violence in western Burma. He threatened journalists
who violate the military's
strict censorship with up to nine
years imprisonment, under existing law.
The question is whether or not Myint Swe's vice presidency can
constrain President Thein Sein's reform initiative. Regardless of whether Myint
Swe is a hardliner or a moderate, it's highly unlikely that he'll be able to
disrupt the reform course. The reforms are beginning to gain momentum, spurred
increasingly by the government's emphasis on improving the domestic economic
situation. Since last year, all the generals-turned-civilian power-holders are
competing to prove their reformist credentials.
The first event to undermine the hardliners last year was President
Thein Sein's decision in September to suspend construction of the Chinese-backed
Myitsone Dam, a multi-billion dollar project to generate hydropower from
Burma's Irrawaddy River and sell it China. At first, Beijing was shocked by the
decision, but soon backed down and has since tried to reason with the Burmese
government to resume the project. So far, China has not tried to complicate
Burma's internal politics by giving pro-China foes of the reforms (such as
retired vice president Tin Aung Myint Oo and Electric Power Minister Zaw Min)
external leverage, and that lack of support from Beijing seems to be weakening
the hardliners within the regime. (There are reports that the president is
likely to reshuffle his cabinet and remove Zaw Min and other hardliners soon.)
The second event to shake the hardliners' control last year was when a
group of conservatives in the ruling USDP party lobbied
ex-dictator Than Shwe to ask that President Thein Sein cancel the April 1
by-election (which subsequently brought Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD to parliament).
According to sources close to the USDP, Than Shwe turned out to be indifferent
to political details so long as the policies of his successors did not
jeopardize the political safety or material well-being of his family. The
failure to secure sufficient backing from Than Shwe was a major blow for the
hardliners. Now no one in the government is willing to openly show sympathy
with the conservatives.
But here's a caveat. Though the ruling elite remains broadly united on
the big questions, there's still one factor that could cause a split within the
leadership. The ex-generals have to figure out a strategy to contain Aung San
Suu Kyi's popularity and prevent her from winning another sweeping victory in
the 2015 general elections. Since Thein Sein and some other reform-minded
leaders see themselves as one-term leaders,
they're relatively unconcerned about losing the next election; what worries
them more is preserving their reform agenda and making a reputable exit.
This
sets them off from the younger generation of leaders-in-waiting within the
USDP, who still can't shake the bitter aftertaste of their party's humiliating
defeat in the April by-elections. This divergence of interests could yet lead
to a fundamental schism within the political establishment.
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