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The Peoples of Burma Impatiently Wait for Change
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18279 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1990 |
2,862 Words |
| Author
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Josef Silverstein
Josef Silverstein is professor of Political science at Rutgers
University. He is the author and editor of several books and
articles including Independent Burma at Forty Years: Six
Interpretations, Burma: Military Rule and the Politics of
Stagnation, and Burmese Politics: The Dilemma of National
Unity. |
On May 27, 1990, the Burmese people went to the polls, voting for the national League for Democracy (NLD) and against the military rulers. If they had thought their brave act would bring about a quick transfer of power to civilian rule and the beginning of a restoration of democracy, they since have found that it has not. Burma's summer of discontent continues into the fall as its military rulers seek ways and means to vitiate the overwhelming victory of the NLD and deny it the leadership it won. With the country cut off from regular coverage by international news services and with events elsewhere in the world more easily reported, the two-year struggle for the restoration of popular democratic rule remains almost unknown to those beyond its borders. But if Burma remains a mystery to the world, it is no mystery to the people who live there.
Background to the Present Situation
In the summer of 1988, before the winds of democracy began to blow in Eastern Europe, the peoples of Burma, following the leadership of the students, began to demonstrate for an end to constitutional dictatorship and the socialist economic system imposed by the military, which had reduced the country to a UN designated “least developed nation.” In response to their nationwide peaceful demonstration on August 8, the military use of deadly force only strengthened the people's resolve. On September 18, as the administrative system dissolved and elements of the air force and the navy came over to the side of the people, the army crushed the peaceful demonstrations of unarmed and unresisting civilians with sustained violent force. Thousands of students fled their homes and took refuge in the border areas among the minorities who were at war with the government Despite the fact that more Burmese men, women, and children were killed than were slain at the Tiananmen Square demonstrations a year later, only the later massacre provoked worldwide outrage; the former did not because the international press witnessed and reported events in China but was barred from Burma.
The Election
The election came as a result of a promise the military made following its seizure of power. In their first declaration, the soldier-rulers said that once law, order, peace, and tranquility had been restored, “democratic multiparty general elections would be held. By the end of September 1988, the military rulers now organized as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), decreed that political organizations could be formed, thus laying the foundation for the
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