By Patricia Lee Sharpe
Some Americans boast of not voting in 2010. Others strut and say they’ve never voted! The system is too corrupt, too unresponsive, too dirty. Idiots! They’re so pure they don’t exist, politically. I wonder sometimes if WhirledView has any impact. And yet, without tossing a few well-chosen stones into the ocean, how to make a splash?
What's in a Win?
Just such questions of purity and efficacy have arisen in the aftermath of the recent Burmese elections. Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League of Democracy have won 43 of the 44 seats available to civilian voters, which leaves 80% of the seats in Parliament controlled by the military (to say nothing of the presidency and other offices held by figures who have “resigned” from the military). Suu Kyi herself has pointed out that the elections were flawed. Observers from the European Union stopped short of praising the process as anything more than a step in the right direction.
The elections, which were not nation-wide, evidently, were scheduled for many districts where cynics would have predicted no hope for reform-minded candidates, a devious way of tipping the scales even further against the opposition. Most hard-headed observers expected voters in the four districts around the new capital and those in districts hosting military installations to back regime sympathizers. Who employs them? Who fills their rice bowls? You don’t usually bite the hand that feeds you. In addition, analysts assumed, the people in hilly tribal areas would vote for fellow tribals, not a Berman lowlander, whatever her glamor or her opposition to a repressive army. This, too, would hurt Suu Kyi’s NLD.
Voters Thought for Themselves
The “realists” turned out to be wrong. Suu Kyi and her party members won all but one available district, a Shan constituency, which did indeed send a tribal to the new Parliament, although the National League of Democracy won in a neighboring Shan district. The NLD even came out ahead in those army-dominated districts. This achievement should remind us all that military men and women can think for themselves, even if they spend most of their time following orders.
But let’s not over-hype the election results. Aung San Suu Kyi and her party have won a resounding victory in an election guaranteeing, by its very design, that she and her NLD colleagues will be hopelessly outnumbered in Parliament. This clever bit of engineering on the part of the regime has led to the big question: should The Lady claim the seat she has won—or should she not, lest she legitimize a junta that kept her under house arrest for two decades and treated too many other justice-seekers worse by far?
Is She Just a Tool?
Some analysts worry that Suu Kyi is being manipulated by a deeply-hated regime that has turned Myanmar into an economic basket case during its decades of iron-fisted control. The Generals, they believe, have dug themselves into a hole they can’t get out of by themselves. However, with Suu Kyi as a decorative but ineffectual figurehead in Parliament, it may be that the US and other sources of economic aid will be sufficiently charmed and bamboozled to lift sanctions, allow trade and investment and provide the country with humanitarian assistance.
What a contrast to the regime’s policy in the wake of the devastating cyclone Nargis in 2008, when the Generals preferred to allow people to die rather than risk the interference that would inevitably come with accepting commensurate emergency aid! No doubt this callous policy lost them more than a few votes in the recent election. Having monks shot during the Saffron uprising a few years ago didn’t help either.
Not that Myanmar has been wholly isolated over the years. Despite criticism from the West, a robustly democratic India has remained a trading partner. Bengali businessmen have seen to that. For India there’s been a vital foreign policy consideration, too, a need to counterbalance China’s interventions. Both giants have a ravenous appetite for natural resources. Wood, for instance. Plus petroleum, natural gas, minerals and gems. Both also want to make sure that Myanmar is not drawn too completely into the other’s sphere of influence, and therein may lie one more reason for the Generals' change of policy. China’s attentions have been particularly generous, but China also has a certain tendency to be overbearing when it comes to smaller neighbors. It may be that the Generals, as nationalists, saw the need for some diplomatic rebalancing as well as a need for more controllable economic transfusions.
Meanwhile, Suu Kyi is handling victory as deftly as she handled victimhood. She plays down her own role. She highlights the ways in which ordinary people can assume an ever larger public role. A TV news story (on BBC, I think) featured a young girl, eyes shining, grinning from ear to ear, in excellent English, envisioning The Lady as president. This is probably not a theme that should be over-emphasized, either by foreign observers or by local enthusiasts. Backlash is not unimaginable. Change may not be irreversible.
Weak Hands Aren't Hopeless
What’s more, at this early stage in the game, expectations can be raised too high. Given the existing Constitution (Suu Kyi has called for revisions) and the makeup of the Parliament to which she has been elected, her principal power for the foreseeable future will be the same she has had for years: that of the bully pulpit, the power of inspiration, the power of persuasion. Meanwhile, Suu Kyi and the NLD have legitimacy and increased visibility. They have something to build on.
During his long years of exile from Tibet, the Dalai Lama has demonstrated how powerfully a weak hand can be played. He may never return to Lhasa. Tibet may never be free of Chinese rule. But the Tibetan diaspora has ensured the survival of Tibetan intellectual and cultural traditions, which are respected, even practiced, around the world. Who knows what will happen, even among the Han, should religious freedom ever be permitted in China?
Reform has Benefits for Baddies, Too
For whatever constellation of reasons, the military regime in Myanmar determined that change was necessary. They also decided Suu Kyi would be more beneficial as an ally than as an irreconcilable enemy. Therefore, they have given her the space to take a step in the right direction for those who cherish democracy. There’s room for applause here. It may be a small step, but it’s not insignificant. As US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently observed, even the most regressive regimes can reform.
If the lifting of sanctions is gradual and the injection of economic assistance is proportionate to the evolution of the political system, then this nasty bunch of generals may very well be able to retire rich—and safe. They may even, in the end, be respected for doing the right thing. I wonder if Bashar al Assad ever looks toward Yangon and wishes he’d played his own end game a little differently.