Coup? What coup? The early morning takeover of Myanmar on Monday by the Tatmadaw (Burmese army) barely deserves the name. The word ‘coup’ suggests that Myanmar was being ruled by a civilian and democratic government before now. It was not.
Although Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in ‘free’ elections in 2015, the constitutional revision implemented by the military in 2008 meant that Tatmadaw retained 25 per cent of seats in both houses of the national assembly. More pertinently, whatever the outcome of elections, Tatmadaw reserved its rights to three ministries: home affairs, border affairs and defence.
Furthermore, in a move aimed squarely at Suu Kyi, who was married to the Oxford academic Michael Aris, Burmese citizens were barred from a presidential position if they were married to a foreigner. Although The Lady, as she became known, skirted around this problem by awarding herself the title State Counsellor and nominated her confederate Win Myint as president, nevertheless it has always been clear that real power lay outside the national assembly.
So if Tatmadaw held the reins of power, why did they bother to remove her? The trigger seems to have been the outcome of November’s election. The NLD’s refusal to account for ‘no-name’ votes particularly riled the military. The Lady, famed for her stubbornness, forgot that for Myanmar’s military leaders she was the mise-en-scène not the play itself, let alone the director. The purpose of The Lady’s release from her ‘ivory tower’ confinement in 2010 was to relieve Myanmar of its pariah status in the West and encourage foreign investment. But Asian politics has moved on. For the Tatmadaw, her usefulness as a palliative for its regime has been removed.
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