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The End of Military-Guided Electoral Authoritarianism: The 2015 Elections in Myanmar MARCO BÜNTE — Associate Professor, Co-Director Global Asia 21 Century, Monash University Malaysia
The article proceeds as follows: First, it reviews the literature on electoral authoritarianism and the democratization potential of elections and identifies the main factors behind the defeats of these regimes at the ballot box. Second, it outlines the main path of Myanmar’s military regime, its transformation into a hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime, and the role elections have played in the country’s post-independence history. Third, it discusses the reasons for the USDP’s defeat at the 2015 elections and the demise of electoral authoritarianism in Myanmar. Fourth, it assesses the impact of the 2015 elections on democratization in Myanmar. Finally, it closes with some remarks on the importance of the Myanmar case for theory building.
Myanmar is a special case since it does not have a tradition of strong political parties. After 1948 the military became the most important institution. The consequence thereof was not only a highly militarized regime but also the lack of strong institutions. The following chapter will look closely at the role elections have played within the last 50 years, the role of the army, and the actions of key politicians during the most important critical junctures.
In March 1962 General Ne Win staged a military coup, which brought an end to Myanmar’s parliamentary period and led to the formation of the Revolutionary Council – a 17-member body of senior military officers that ruled the country by fiat until 1974. It abolished the 1947 Constitution, dissolved Parliament, and banned all political parties. Apart from aborting political pluralism, the coup hindered the development of political parties for almost three decades. The military set up its own Leninist party, the Burmese Socialist Program Party (BSPP), which ran the country unchallenged for over 25 years (Silverstein 1977). Elections were held (under the 1974 Constitution) for the unicameral People’s Assembly in 1974, 1978, 1981, and 1985 – all of which were easily won by BSPP representatives since the party did not face any competition from rival parties; allegedly, voter turnout was regularly more than 90 percent (Morgenbesser 2015: 173). The military became the backbone of Myanmar’s socialist one-party state (1974–1988), in which General Ne Win was both party chairman and president. Based on his personal influence in the army and the party, he kept his subordinates divided and controlled all potential rivals through regular purges. Active and retired military officers dominated the cabinets and rubber-stamp parliaments. In the closing years of the socialist period, the influence of the military waned due to the fact that the BSPP was transforming into a socialist mass party (Taylor 2009:318–321). Yet, even during the socialist period, the military was unable to organize a strong party with deep roots in society. The BSPP was riddled with factionalism and was highly unpopular; it is thus no wonder that the popular uprising of August 1988 abruptly ended the BSPP’s one-party rule (Stokke 2015:13). As Slater (2009:272) puts it, the regime “suffered from an abject lack of social backing since the onset of the Tatmadaw regime in 1962.” Finally, the military stepped in and crushed the prodemocracy protests with its “tried and true tactics of brute force” (Slater 2009: 273). After toppling the BSPP and putting an end to the street protests, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) organized the country’s first multiparty elections for 30 years.
The NLD, borne out of the prodemocracy movement, emerged as the principal mass-based party and won the election by a landslide. The NLD crushed the military-backed candidates in the May 1990 vote, capturing 60 percent of the vote and 80 percent of seats (492 seats) compared with the NUP’s 21 percent of the vote and 2 percent of seats (10 seats). Major ethnic-based parties such as the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) and the Arakan League for Democracy (ALD) also performed well, receiving the second- and third-largest number of seats, respectively. The elections were largely seen as free from count manipulation, which may be attributed to the law requiring that votes be tallied in each constituency in the presence of the candidates or their agents. In another respect, however, the elections can be seen as a perfectly “administered charade” (Guyot 1990:206) since the SLORC military junta announced shortly before the elections that it would stay in power until a new constitution had been adopted (Tonkin 2007).
Having consolidated its position internally and severely weakened the opposition movement, the top military leadership announced a “roadmap to disciplined democracy” in 2003 (Bünte 2014). The most important steps in this formal institution-building process were the writing of the new Constitution (1993–1996; 2004–2007), the referendum on the new Constitution (2008), the creation of a regime-sponsored party in 2010 (the Union Solidarity and Development Party, USDP), and the 2010 elections, which were followed by a transfer of power to a civilian government in March 2011. However, these political changes between 2003 and 2011 did not constitute a genuine democratic transition, since they did not entail any form of political liberalization. The Ministry of Home Affairs is particularly important as the head of the General Administration Department for a region or state, who ultimately could not be touched by the civilian government (ICG 2014: 10) and ensured the military’s continued dominance while offering the chance for generational change within the army. This strategy allowed Senior General Than Shwe and General Maung Aye to retire from the SPDC leadership and let younger members of the former military junta take over.
