Military coup in myanmar
This was a fundamentally unstable alliance. No matter how much she dutifully served her former jailors, she could never win their trust, because she was overwhelmingly more popular and legitimate than they, being seen as the mother of the nation who, everyone knows, was wrongfully oppressed by the very people still in charge. So, why the coup, which could backfire so badly? For the same reasons that any bureaucrat must eliminate any understudy who performs too well. At a lecture in Singapore, she said her relationship with the military was ‘not so bad’.
She very much associated herself with them, presenting an image of ‘national unity’, and even had journalists reporting on the massacres arrested. In fact, it worked so well that ASSK’s democratic halo slipped in the eyes of the West, actively supporting as she did their genocidal campaign against the Rohingyas, to the point she defended them in the Hague in 2019. This constitution guaranteed their role, and it seemed to work. What is behind this coup? Surely the military had no need for it? They drafted the 2008 constitution that enabled ASSK to come to (limited) power in 2011, a process they engineered to win greater investment from the West and to secure their position, rather than end up overthrown in a US-backed ‘colour revolution’. Crucially the newly elected MPs, predominantly from ASSK’s party, have been prevented from meeting in what was (not coincidentally) due to be the first day of the new parliament. The internet was cut off and later restored, while mobile phone services remain cut off.
Following this, the coup was announced by U Myint Swe, the military-appointed Vice-President of Suu Kyi’s government, who has declared a state of emergency for a year, at which point he promises new elections will be held.Īll powers have been transferred to the military as provided for in the constitution they themselves wrote in 2008, which was designed to facilitate just such a coup.
On Sunday (31st January) Aung San Suu Kyi, the ‘State Counselor’ of Myanmar, leading ministers and leaders of ASSK’s party the National League for Democracy (NLD) were arrested. In organising a swift coup against Aung San Suu Kyi (ASSK), Myanmar’s generals have killed the illusion, already in its death throes, of the liberalisation of Myanmar under US domination.