Beacon of Hope for Democracy

For years, Aung San Suu Kyi was the beacon of hope for democracy in Myanmar. But, as Myanmar author Ma Thida suggests, for many Myanmar people the years before the 2021 coup were not “democratic” under Suu Kyi’s government, nor was there a clear road toward democracy. Rather, the country remained trapped within a “maze” created by the military where it held control of key levers of military, economic and political power.

Indeed, liberal democracy has long held a talismanic quality in Myanmar politics where transition is almost always interpreted through the lens of democratisation, rather than through other prisms such as nationalism, self-determination or control of resources.

This can lead to an assessment of contemporary Myanmar as a struggle between liberal democratic revolutionary forces and an authoritarian military regime. In reality, the forces currently opposing the military regime are extremely varied. Some, such as human rights activist groups and political parties, may have claim to democratic goals, others are primarily concerned with ethnic nationalism, and others still are simply striving for their own version of gun-wielding authoritarian power.

The interests of these groups are aligned only insofar as they are opposed to Min Aung Hlaing’s regime. This makes the narrative of democratic struggle in Myanmar far less cut and dry. And even where democracy is a stated goal, our research has revealed sharply diverging assumptions about the meaning of “democracy” itself.

The longstanding grievances of ethnic minority groups in border areas are now more widely understood by members of the Bamar majority, mostly because the brutality of the Burmese military has now also been experienced by communities in heartland areas. In military terms, many ethnic revolutionary armies have a stronger hand now than they had prior to the coup, so in some ways Bamar political leaders in the shadow National Unity Government in exile had no choice but to imagine a more inclusive and federal Myanmar. Whatever the motivation, a reimagining of a federal democracy in Myanmar has clearly been catalysed by the coup and the intensification of conflict.

In “liberated areas” in Sagaing region and Kayah state, for example, there are innovations in governance and new experiments in using federal principles at the local level. Local civil society and community organisations, from national to township and village level, are also playing a key role in mediation and coordination not only over distribution of humanitarian aid but also in local governance.

These new practices and forms of local governance are varied and by no means all democratic in nature, yet they have created an opportunity for reenvisaging and redesigning local governance in the country, in a way that has largely been impossible since independence from Britain more than 70 years ago.