theidependent
Dr. Forqan Uddin Ahmed
14 February, 2021
Critics fail to understand the military-civilian relations and other complexities of Myanmar politics where issues like ethnicity, history, and cultural identity are key ingredients of legitimacy. Myanmar authorities are loathe to recognize the Rohingyas as a separate ethnic group.
On the morning of February 1, Myanmar’s all-powerful Tatmadaw detained the country’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and other senior figures from the governing party, National League for Democracy (NLD), seizing power in a coup less than 10 years after it handed over power to a civilian government. Hours after the detention of Suu Kyi, Myanmar's army declared a yearlong state of emergency and said power had been handed to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Min Aung Hlaing. The worst fears of an army takeover, open talk of which were going around for some time after the elections in November, has come true, spelling doom to the prospect of democracy for the time being and throwing the country into long spell of instability and uncertainty. Even while protesting, demonstrations and open defiance of the military takeover are taking place in major cities of Myanmar together with strongest international condemnation and the threat of sanctions hanging like Damocles sword. Knowing the pathology of Myanmar military, its past records, socio-political orientation, particularly its view as the guardian of the state, it will not cut much ice with Min Hlaing, who, along with the corporate interests of the military, has his own motivation to stay in power. Min Hlaing was to retire in a couple of months with the prospect of going into oblivion as a general without the command of the army.
