Early this morning, the Myanmar military (Tatmadaw) seized control of state power. The picture is still very confused, and so the below is as much to try to work through my own thoughts as anything else.
It’s not strictly a “coup”
This may seem pedantic, but it’s not. A coup involves an armed takeover of state power that involves suspending the normal constitutional order. Under Myanmar’s military-drafted 2008 constitution, the military is actually authorised to take over under certain circumstances, and it is explicitly relying on these constitutional processes, rather than simply declaring the constitution null and void. The army arrested the president, allowing the military-appointed vice-president to become acting president (Art. 73); he held a meeting of the National Defence and Security Council (NDSC — or at least its military-majority members) to trigger Articles 417 and 418, declaring a state of emergency which allows legislative and executive power to be transferred to the military for a year (renewable for two further six-month periods).
Why isn’t this merely pedantic? It’s not because it means their intervention is legitimate; rather, it’s because it underscores that Myanmar is still operating within the bounds established by the military in 2008. It does not need to overthrow that order. It always had this process available to it, if certain “red lines” were breached. It reminds us that the military has always remained Myanmar’s dominant political force, superintending the transition to, and superintending, a limited electoral regime — as I laid out in 2014. It also implies that the military must feel (1) that the “red lines” were being breached in some way but also (2) that temporary intervention, within the existing system, can fix the issues.
So why now? What are “the issues”?
There is no easy answer to this — I’m not aware of a single Myanmar expert who believed the military would seize power, despite some sabre-rattling over the last week.
I am very sceptical of the idea circulating, explicitly and implicitly, in a lot of Western press coverage: that the military is intervening to support its “ally”, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which was “humiliated” in the November 2020 elections, which the NLD won in a landslide.
The Tatmadaw itself rightly highlights the problem with this thesis: if the army was so reluctant to see the USDP lose mightily to the NLD, why didn’t it intervene in 2015, the first time this happened? After all, the 2020 election result was broadly identical to 2015, when the USDP lost to the NLD. Why would an NLD landlside be so problematic now, compared to then? The idea that the USDP is a military “ally” is also problematic: in both 2015 and in 2020 there was no real evidence of the military aiding the USDP. If it was desperate to see the USDP retain or regain power, why wait until after an election?
What has changed since 2015? It is not really the NLD’s capacity to wield power in ways that would violate military interests, because the 2008 constitution enshrines (a) military control of key parts of the state apparatus and (b) an effective military veto over constitutional change. The NLD’s efforts to change the constitution to weaken military domination, pursued in the last parliament, were always doomed to failure. There is no reason to believe it would be different in this parliament.
However, these efforts certainly antagonised the military and contributed to a steady deterioration in civil-military relations in recent years. Media reports suggest the NDSC has not been convened since 2017 and the military has not been cooperating with the elected government — despite the latter serving as a human shield for the Tatmadaw’s ethnic cleansing in Rakhine state.
Possibly this growing antagonism, combined with the looming forced retirement of the military commander-in-chief, explains the army’s move.
What the military says… and means
In explaining its intervention, the Tatmadaw’s formal statement (below) complains (1) that the Union Election Commission (UEC) has failed to address concerns of electoral fraud, and (2) that the president has refused to convene the NDSC.
The military has been complaining about electoral irregularities since before the election. It claims that there were “10.5 million cases of potential fraud”. The UEC has dismissed these concerns, including through a lengthy report. But it has “also refused to share or publish the final copies of voter lists that were displayed on election day”. In the Tatmadaw’s statement, read out on the military-run TV channel, the UEC’s refusal to address these concerns is the primary basis used to claim that their intervention is constitutional:
Although the sovereignty of the nation must derive from the people, there was terrible fraud in the voter list during the democratic general election which runs contrary to ensuring a stable democracy. A refusal to settle the issue of voter list fraud and a failure to take action and follow a request to postpone lower-house and upper-house parliament sessions is not in accordance with article 417 of the 2018 constitution that refers to “acts or attempts to take over the sovereignty of the Union by wrongful forcible means” and could lead to a disintegration of national solidarity.
Due to such acts, there have been a lot of protests going on in townships and cities in Myanmar to demonstrate their mistrust toward UEC. Other parties and people have also been found conducting different kinds of provocations including displaying flags which are very damaging to national security.
Unless this problem is resolved, it will obstruct the path to democracy and it must therefore be resolved according to the law. Therefore, the state of emergency is declared in accordance with article 417 of the 2008 constitution.
Now, it is hard to know whether the military seriously believes that there was such widespread fraud. Most observers would admit that there were probably some irregularities, but not enough to materially affect the result. But the Tatmadaw are not exactly objective observers. They are repeatedly surprised by election results favouring the NLD, as if they genuinely believe their own propaganda. It is just about theoretically possible that the military believes the allegations of fraud, and that they are genuinely concerned about unrest.
More plausible, perhaps, is that they are primarily concerned about being defied by institutions and individuals they do not control. The UEC is appointed by the government, not the military. This is a rare loophole in the 2008 constitution. It may be that the military sees a potential weakness here, and wants to intervene to “correct” this. It’s notable that point 2 of the CinC’s statement indicates a determination to replace the UEC so it can “take appropriate measures”. The Tatmadaw is also annoyed by he civilian president’s refusal to summon the NDSC. This again entails defiance of the military and thus, arguably, symbolises its waning influence. Maybe the military is not 100% convinced by claims of 10.5m instances of fraud, but they are probably 100% alarmed at being repeatedly ignored when they insist that the claims must be investigated.
This alarm could also be linked to the looming retirement of the Tatmadaw CinC, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. By law he is supposed to retire in July 2021. Last month, one journalist suggested that while Min Aung Hlaing might like to convene the NDSC to select a hand-picked successor, the NLD might try to delay this until he was forced to retire, which might give them more influence over the appointment — potentially installing a more reform-oriented individual. Now, this story doesn’t entirely stack up, because the NDSC would still have a majority of military members. But it does signify a looming, serious contention between the army and elected leaders. The UEC’s defiance, and the refusal to convene the NDSC, may indicate to Min Aung Hlaing that he cannot control the succession (and the potential political implications of this) without first dislodging the elected government.
There have also been many suggestions in recent years that Min Aung Hlaing himself has ambitions to be president. From this perspective, it might be argued that he was annoyed by the USDP’s poor showing, because an NLD-dominated parliament will never elect him as president. Therefore, he plans to corrupt the electoral process before holding new elections (point 6 of his statement), which will result in a more supportive parliament.
I have never thought that these rumours about Min Aung Hlaing made much sense, because they are all premised on the idea that the military must control the government directly in order to secure its interests. However, the 2008 constitution allows the Tatmadaw to secure its interests without doing this. Why bother to take formal control, and all the flak that entails, when you can control the broad parameters of state policy from the sidelines?
So, again, we circle back to the key question: what has changed so much that the military feels that this indirect domination is no longer sufficient? Personally, I can’t point to much. The NLD remains bound by the 2008 constitution, which it can’t amend without military consent. I cannot really see what the NLD could have done to challenge the military’s practical hegemony from within those constraints. Aung San Suu Kyi has served as a useful human shield for the Tatmadaw’s ongoing human rights abuses —in short, the system was basically working well for the military. Unless Min Aung Hlaing harbours overwhelming personal ambition, or unless the NLD had something really big up their sleeve, it doesn’t make sense for him to have intervened in order to rig the political system in his favour. This is precisely why very few Myanmar experts expected a coup!
In short, the best explanation I can come up with at the moment is the military’s concern at being defied by key state institutions and elected leaders, coupled perhaps with concerns about the military line of succession. To me, these still do not seem sufficiently strong enough reasons to prompt the Tatmadaw to seize control, given their indirect domination of the political system, coupled with the serious costs of taking direct power. So, unless I am missing something very big, there must be more to this, that is currently hidden from view. I really welcome comments and thoughts!
