New Myanmar Political Strategies

Recently, the Southeast Asia Study Program held the second annual seminar for the 2010 under the title of Myanmar's Political Strategies for 2010. The seminar was held at Room 301 of the Liberal Arts Building in Thammasat University, Tha Phrachan campus. The seminar was kicked off with the opening speech by Assoc Prof Chonlada Kophatta, acting director of the Southeast Asia Study Program. Other panelists were Wirat Niyomtham, director of the Myanmar Study Center of Naresuan University, Phonphimon Trichot, a researcher of Chulalongkorn University's Asia Study Institute and Dunlayaphak Pricharat, a lecturer of the Southeast Asia Study Program of Thammasat's Faculty of Liberal Arts.
Ideologies and Constitution
Wirat said the 2008 Constitution of Myanmar has been drafted for ten years. Its strong point is the plan to have a new election held and the charter also led to formations of several political parties. He regards the 2008 charter as the one that combined both strong and weak points so that the Myanmar military could remain in power. The 2008 charter was drafted based on three main thoughts, which are (a) the thinking about nationalism and history, (b) political lessons, and (c) the needs of the country' leaders.
The Myanmar Government always gave priority to the nationalism when drafting the charter. The context of the Myanmar constitution is always related to the issue of nationalism. For example, the charter mentioned the country's independence won by General Aung San. The charter also mentions unity of the country and said General Ne Win united the country. It also mentioned peace, saying General Than Shwe is the leader who brought about peace in the country.
Moreover, the Myanmar Government focused on the Buddhist society in the charter because the Government regarded that the Buddhist society could bring about peace. After Myanmar got its independence, the nationalism and the military had a very important role in the country.

Role of Army
The constitution of Myanmar also created the opponents of the nation in two groups -- internal and external enemies of the country. There are two main internal enemies of the nation:
1. Communism as an underground organization. Persons, who play key role in promoting Communism in Myanmar, are still alive.
2. Ethnic Minorities. Ethnic people adhere to their ethnic groups' ideology and enter politics to fight for their causes.
The constitution specified two types of external enemies - old and new dangers. The old danger was capitalism and the colonization by Japan, the United Kingdom and white Chinese people, who were backed by the US Central Intelligence Agency, and fascists or foreign troops. The new danger is the great Ayothaya or Thailand, which is regarded by Myanmar as posing threats to its natural resources. The Myanmar Government also regards the United States as its new strategic danger.
The Myanmar charter classified political lessons into old and new lessons. The old political lessons talked about the socialist democracy, which the Myanmar military admitted that the system was a failure as the leaders had ties with the black markets and there were widespread corruption. The new political lessons are related to the politics for the country and the people, based on the belief that this kind of politics will help the Union of Myanmar survive.
Finally, the charter includes articles related to the leaders. The charter classified leaders into two groups - good and bad leaders. Aung San Suu Kyi was classified as a bad leader, whose role helped the military become stronger because Suu Kyi was too stubborn and set too many conditions. Another bad leader was U Nu, who succeeded General Aung San and was regarded as the one who led to an establishment of pro-democracy movements.
Wirat said the 2008 Constitution followed two versions of charter - 1974 and 1993 constitutions. The 1974 charter had a main weak point for allowing the Government to use too harsh violence against the people. The 1993 charter empowered the military to lead elections and left the market mechanisms in the hands of the people while having the central Government control natural resource management.
Under the new charter, the politics is a multi-party system and the state is a union state and the society is Buddhism society. However, Buddhism is not the national religion but there are more Buddhists in the society than people of other faiths. And the military junta has transformed into the National Defense and Security Council (NDSC).
The Myanmar Parliament is a union-type Parliament with 664 seats. The parliamentarians have five-year term. There are two chambers - the People's Council and the Ethnic Council. The People's Council has 440 seats - 330 to be elected from all districts and 110 to be appointed by the military. The Ethnic Council has 224 seats - 64 representatives of states and 156 representatives appointed by the military.
The president is the Government's leader and all the power will come from the president. The president will have security advisors. The Government will be required to work under the same union ideologies -- 1. the union must not be divided, 2. the Government must create national unity, and 3. the country must have strong sovereignty. These ideologies were created to solve problems related to politicians and ethnic minority groups. Moreover, the country leaders must always adhere to Buddhism. When new cities are built, the leaders will always build pagodas there and each leader will have his own pagoda.

Ethnic Minority Groups Government
Phonphimon said the Myanmar troops raided Khokang Special Region and seized its capital, Luakai. Kokang is a region on the border with China. The Myanmar Government alleged that Khokang built up arms. Khokang used to be an area under communists' control but the region had a ceasefire with the Myanmar Government for over 20 years. The new constitution has an article, which states that there shall be one Army.
The constitution does not allow ethnic minority groups to have their own armies. Now, the Myanmar Government wants all armies to be loyal to the Myanmar Government but it is difficult to reach that goal in practice. But now, the Myanmar Government has reached agreements with certain ethnic minority groups because both sides agreed on their conditions and because no ethnic minority groups' armed forces could fight against the Myanmar Army. Most of ethnic minority groups in the North are waiting to hold negotiations with the Myanmar Government.
The economies of Khokang and Wa regions have prospered a lot. If they fail to reach an agreement with the Myanmar Government, they could cause serious problems in the future because the Wa Army is formidable and Wa State's geography makes it hard for the Myanmar troops to access the area while the Wa people are more familiar with the areas and know how to make use of the geography. However, the Myanmar Government now has enough money to buy weapons from both China and Russia. The Myanmar Government also receives support from the North Korea, making its army the second strongest army in Southeast Asia after Vietnam.
The Myanmar Government raided the Khokang region now because its army has become so strong that it no longer needs to compromise with any ethnic minority group. Besides, the provisions of the new charter empower the Myanmar Government to do so. Moreover, the Myanmar Government might also want to test reactions of China and might provide it a chance to establish ties with the United States.
The raid against Khokang affected all ethnic minority groups. Therefore, the ethnic groups had to get themselves prepared to face what may happen in the future. China was also affected by the incident because it lost face and was in an uneasy situation as some 200,000 residents of the Khokang region may flee from the Myanmar troops and cross the border into China. That scenario could cause burden on China and affect its economy because the border trade between Yunnan and Khokang made the Yunnan's economy grow much stronger.
To be able to survive, the ethnic minority groups must unite themselves into a union to set their common strategies. They will also have to set and play their role in the political arena. But the ethnic minority groups have a weak point. That is, they lack trust towards one another because the physical geography makes the minority groups stay apart. They failed to share common history, so they lack mutual trust and some incidents made them hate one another.
Secret Tunnels and Nuclear Weapon
Dunlayaphak said the Myanmar army has been developing itself to respond to various kinds of threats against the state. The threats included the pro-democracy movements, the rebellion by ethnic minority groups and interferences by western superpowers. All the threats prompted the Myanmar Army to grow from a small to medium and a large army with potential to go to war against a foreign country.
Myanmar gave priority to two military strategies. First, it changed its capital from Rangoon to Naypyidaw. Naypyidaw has replaced Rangoon as the war command center because Rangoon's location is not good for maintaining position during a war. And the Myanmar military attached importance to three forms of wars - the conventional warfare, in which the Government will recruit armed forces of minority groups to fight along side with the Myanmar Army, the subtle defensive or guerrilla warfare and the people's warfare.

Other Aspects
Myanmar's complicated networks of tunnels are located in Naypyidaw. The Myanmar Government built the secret tunnels to set up underground networks for suppressing the minority groups and for getting itself prepared to wage guerrilla warfare. It has been quite clear for sometime that the Myanmar Government has been building up nuclear weapons. But, the Myanmar Government also expressed its clear stand to develop nuclear technology for peace. But the Myanmar Government might express its stand for nuclear development for peace just to avoid confrontation with the superpowers who may step in to disarm Myanmar. As a result, it has not been clear so far as to whether Myanmar has already acquired nuclear weapons or not.
From another perspective, the rumors that Myanmar has already had nuclear weapons might be spread to defend itself from neighboring countries. Myanmar might want to use the rumors as military bargaining power against the neighboring countries as Myanmar came under much pressure from foreign countries. Anyway, the existence of the secret tunnels was confirmed with evidence.