Myanmar: Roadmap to Where?

Southeast Asian Affairs 2004 MYANMAR Roadmap to Where? Robert H. Taylor Since the military took power in September 1988, Myanmar has been under sustained domestic and international pressure to carry out sweeping political changes which would result in the establishment of an elected civilian government . This has been the price for any substantial foreign economic co-operation and assistance. As no substantial moves have been made in that direction by the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) government, known previously as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), Western governments, led by the United States, have seen fit progressively to increase the levels of economic sanctions applied to the country in the apparent belief that this will result in international isolation, economic collapse, and eventual fall of the regime. This strategy for creating political change in Myanmar has been strongly encouraged by the Myanmar exile community which fled the country in the late 1980s and early 1990s following the bankruptcy of the previous Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) regime. Now largely residing in the United States, Europe, and Australia, this small but vocal band of advocates for change, along with their supporters in the media of their new lands of residence , have often argued thatjust one more turn of the sanctions screw and the military regime in Yangon would collapse and then power and authority would quickly flow to National League for Democracy (NLD) under its secretary general , Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and perhaps some of them. This strategy, now pursued for more than a decade and a half, failed once more in 2003. Given the level of U.S. sanctions now applied, with a complete ban on trade, new investments, and all commercial transactions since the end of July 2003, and similar though slightly less draconian sanctions brought forward by the member states of the European Union, as well as a longstanding ban on assistance to Myanmar from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Asian Development Bank (ADB), there seems little more the Western governments can do to force political change in Myanmar short of violating the civil liberties of their own citizens by barring travel by individual tourists to Myanmar. Robert H. Taylor was a Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, and is a consultant on Southeast Asian affairs in London. 172Robert H. Taylor Opposition Confrontation Persists This so far unsuccessful approach to encouraging political change in Myanmar is consonant with the strategy that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD have pursued within Myanmar in their efforts to persuade the army to implement the results of the 1990 national elections in which the NLD gained over 60 per cent of the vote and 80 per cent of the seats. It is their advocacy of this strategy which gives it legitimacy and validity in the minds of Western governments when they manage to think of Myanmar at all. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi reiterated her uncompromising position once more as 2003 dawned in Myanmar, when giving her second press conference since her release from house arrest the previous May. Her comments were very critical of the government of the SPDC under its chairman, Senior General Than Shwe. Though the government had said that it was willing to enter into talks with Aung San Suu Kyi and the other leaders of the NLD, she described these as being "in limbo". According to reports, she was chagrined at the fact that the meetings arranged for her were with members of the cabinet and not with the ruling triumvirate of the Senior General, Deputy Senior General Maung Aye, and then Secretary 1 of the SPDC, General Khin Nyunt. Spokespersons for the government made it clear that, for their part, they found the meetings they had with Aung San Suu Kyi and the other NLD leaders equally frustrating for they felt that she came to the meetings unprepared to present ideas and suggestions which would provide a way forward in terms of how to reach a modus vivendi with the NLD short of handing over state power to them. Rather, she had merely demanded that "democracy" first be established so that the fruits...