Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know (12 page)

The military coup of March 2, 1962, in retrospect, seemed designed to accomplish four goals: ensure that the Union of Burma would not be dismantled through minority secession, free Burma from what the military regarded as incompetent and corrupt civilian rule, strengthen the socialist base of the economy (thus eliminating foreign dominance), and provide the foundation for the perpetuation of military hegemony over the state either directly or indirectly through a civilian front government control. In the space of a generation, none of these objectives could be considered to have been achieved in any credible sense. Ethnic tensions increased and rebellions mushroomed, socialism as administered in Burma was eventually an admitted failure, the establishment of civilianized control through the BSPP was not effective, and it took a third supportive “coup” (September 18, 1988) to keep the military in power.

The immediate effects of the 1962 coup were to dismantle all elements of institutional and personal power that could invalidate or threaten military control. Military rule was run by the Revolutionary Council—a junta of seventeen officers, at the
apex of which was General Ne Win. He was commander of the armed forces, a position he held since 1949 when a Karen leader, loyal to the Union, was forced to step down during the Karen insurrection. All key leaders were arrested, including those in the judiciary who might have declared the coup illegal. It became evident that considerable planning had taken place before the coup, for the pamphlet “The Burmese Way to Socialism” was published on April 30, 1962, and the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) was formally established on July 4 of that year.

The reaction of the volatile student community was important to the coup. They had been in the forefront of nationalistic and anticolonial demonstrations, but the various student unions came out in favor of the coup. This was vacation period (the hot season in Burma), and when the students returned to class in May, they found unacceptable new restrictions on their hostels. On July 7 some 2,000 students demonstrated and the military fired on them, killing perhaps over 100, although the government only admitted that 15 had died. This shock was compounded on the following day when the military blew up the Rangoon University Student Union building that had been the site of anticolonial student demonstrations for a generation.

This symbolic act at the beginning of the BSPP era in 1962 was to reverberate at its close. General Sein Lwin, who later became known as the “butcher of Rangoon” because of his suppression of demonstrations, was said to be the officer who opened fire on the students. He was hated because of that, as well as for suppressing the student demonstrations that took place in 1974 related to the burial site of former UN Secretary General U Thant, who had been secretary to and a close confidant of U Nu. Sein Lwin was appointed by the BSPP as president in July 1988. This infuriated the students and contributed to the popular uprising. He lasted in that role about three weeks. Dr. Maung Maung, who succeeded him as president until the coup of September 18, 1988, offered to rebuild the
destroyed student union building in an attempt to placate student antipathy to the government and as an oblique apology for the regime’s past excesses. It didn’t work.

The Burmese Way to Socialism, set forth in a document published on April 30, 1962, was an admixture of socialism, Buddhist doctrine, and humanism. As one eminent Burmese said, “Because it was socialist it was good, but because it was Burmese it was better.” This was not a communist document, thus confusing some in the Soviet Union who could not deny its strength as titularly socialist but were concerned that it denied Marxist historical inevitability. It stressed the intellectual links between Buddhist philosophical concepts and socialist egalitarianism (as had U Nu earlier, when he remarked that capitalism and greed were not Buddhist virtues). It specifically brought forth the Buddhist belief in the inevitability of change and it was subject to the same temporal laws.

The document began: “The Revolutionary Council of the Union of Burma does not believe that man will be set free from social evils as long as pernicious economic systems exist in which man exploits man and lives on the fat of such appropriation.” It called for the complete ownership of all forms of production, including agriculture, by the state and cooperatives, but it gave no timetable for such actions.

On July 4, 1962, the regime published the constitution of the BSPP (also called the Lanzin Party) for the “transitional period of its construction.” This was a cadre party, and until it morphed into a mass party in 1971, it was composed of twenty-four members, of whom thirteen were on the Revolutionary Council.

The philosophical basis of its rule was
The System of Correlation of Man and His Environment
. Published on January 17, 1963, this was an eclectic mixture of abstruse ideas incorporating Buddhist, socialist, and diverse strains into a potpourri that
was difficult to comprehend. It also denied a Marxist historical perspective, maintaining that “man is the master and captain of history.” The vulgar materialism of the left and right were to be eschewed, and it stated that even the party’s ideology was relative—in a good Buddhist context, change was inevitable. Both documents were taught in required courses that civil servants had to take at the government political institute and in the school and university system. This was an example of the orthodoxy that has been required in Burma/Myanmar since the coup of 1962, when all imported books and journals were subject to censorship and the local media strictly controlled (the local English-language newspaper was called
The Working Peoples’ Daily
, the name finally changed under the present government to
The New Light of Myanmar
).

The BSPP was at its inception a cadre party with very few members, all of whom were military officers. It claimed to have an “outward garb” of the military, but was “revolutionary in essence.” There were less than two dozen full members for a number of years. After three years, it had 99,638 “candidate” members and 167,447 “sympathizers.” By 1966, 29 percent of candidate members were from the armed forces.

It was only in June and July 1971 that the first party congress was held. At that time, membership totaled 73,369, of whom 58 percent were military; 24.4 percent of the 260,857 candidate members were also in the armed forces. This meeting reaffirmed the socialist cast of the economic system but changed its emphasis and orientation. In the early stages, the BSPP seemed to adhere to a stolid Marxist approach emphasizing the urban, industrial proletariat. This approach, however, was ineffective. The category was far too small in such a rurally based economy where two-thirds of the population was agricultural. The congress changed this approach and determined that policy emphasis should be placed on Burma’s national
endowment—agriculture, forestry, and resource extraction, especially (on-shore) oil production. The BSPP recognized that state diplomatic relations were good, but international economic relations were not. The result was to rejoin the World Bank, join the Asian Development Bank, and seek broad bilateral economic assistance. Such support had primarily come from the Japanese following the coup.

The military retained control over the BSPP even after it expanded into a mass organization. To be promoted in the civil service, one essentially had to be a member of the party. The BSPP controlled all mass and professional organizations and essentially prevented the development of any civil society advocacy groups beyond those associated with religion, especially Buddhism.

Following the coup of 1962, the military purged the bureaucracy of the elite, older Burma Civil Service personnel who were adept at running the governmental ministries. They were replaced with military officers who were energetic, loyal, and in many cases intelligent, even if they were placed in positions of authority over organizations and problems they were not experienced to handle. The military command structure permeated decision making, so when orders were given that even common sense would have indicated could not succeed, they had to be obeyed and somehow tortuously justified. To disagree meant essentially dismissal and often jail.

Following the 1963 purge of Brigadier Aung Gyi, a moderate and presumptive heir to General Ne Win who wanted to emphasize agriculture, the administration took a sharp turn to the left toward rigid socialism. An estimated 15,000 businesses and industries were nationalized, run by a bureaucracy that was incompetent to manage a far more simple economy. Political parties were banned in 1964. The country was effectively cut off from the outside world, and conditions at the center
deteriorated while on the periphery rebellions spread. In 1967, General Ne Win is said to have remarked to his senior staff that Burma, the largest rice exporter in the world before World War II, could not feed itself.

Many industries, known as the “state economic enterprises” (the public sector) were established, but as the 1970s and 1980s progressed, the costs of intermediate goods and spare parts increased while the price of exports declined. The state had to borrow, the cost of living rose, and salaries remained abysmal.

The isolation imposed first by the Revolutionary Council, and later by the constitution of 1974, was selective and (over time) modified. Burma’s diplomatic relations reflected its intent to remain neutral in the Cold War. If there were a tilt, it was toward China. Burma felt that the nonaligned movement was too close to the Soviet camp. When it was to meet in 1979 in Havana, Burma pulled out in deference to China, which at that time was on its antihegemonic (i.e., anti-Soviet) crusade. Myanmar rejoined the movement in 1992.

The dire economic conditions of the 1960s forced the BSPP at its first congress to reconsider its economic relations. The government regarded its diplomatic relations as good, but they believed economic relations were poor. The state determined to seek economic assistance, and the reintroduction of much foreign aid followed.

General relations continued to deteriorate, however. Tourists were blatantly discouraged; visas were for twenty-four hours early in that period, and later for only a week. Travel outside Rangoon, Pagan, and Mandalay was considered unsafe. In any case, the communications infrastructure was inadequate. The Burmese had few international contacts. Some shortwave radios existed, but television was lacking, and all books and magazines entering the country were controlled. The state censored all local media.

Foreign investment until 1988 was forbidden except for one West German firm, Fritz-Werner, which produced small arms and weapons for the military and was partly owned by the German government. Socialism prevailed, but as the official economy dried up, the unofficial economy mushroomed. The black market became the source of consumer goods, and in some cases black market bazaars operated openly and were taxed by municipalities. Official jobs were the essential source of sustained income, even at very low levels, and entrepreneur-ship was prevalent only among those who either exercised their acumen in the black market or left the country.

The government was not completely isolated. After the brutal suppression of demonstrations that broke out among students in 1974, first because of economic conditions and then over the burial site of U Thant, the government sought the means to solve both political and economic needs. It became determined to disperse students from congregating in Rangoon and Mandalay, where they created political problems. They emphasized “distance education,” in which students did not need to gather to attend classes. They also decided to form community colleges (junior colleges) in the states and divisions. These would filter out the better students, who could go on the full universities, but the others would remain behind and be given vocational training for local employment. Teams were quietly sent to the United States to explore the experience there. The system was not effective.

Perhaps the only benefit from this period of privation was that a lack of industries, trade, and tourism delayed the detrimental environmental and social effects that so many developing societies have faced, and that Myanmar later began to encounter.

The country had been ruled since 1962 by the decrees of the Revolutionary Council, which of course was completely
military (this was also true during the 1988–2010 State Law and Order Restoration Council [SLORC]/State Peace and Development Council [SPDC] period). There was no legislature, and the judiciary was effectively abolished in March 1962. General Ne Win decided or was convinced that military rule should be regularized under a new constitution, since the old constitution of 1947 had been set aside following the 1962 coup. A group of eminent Burmese, including many civilian politicians, were asked in 1969 what kind of government should be established for the Union—a unitary state with power at the center, or a type of federal state, with dispersed power foci. After considerable internal debate, the group suggested a federal system. Since at least 1962, General Ne Win had publicly deplored federalism as the first step toward secession. A unitary state with power at the center was the chosen method of governance.

Drafting a new constitution started on September 25, 1971, and it took several years to complete. Over time, the government submitted three drafts to the country in informal educational sessions led by senior officials. A referendum was held December 15–31, 1973, the constitution was approved, and elections followed in 1974, after which, on March 2—fourteen years to the day after the 1962 coup—the new constitution came into force. Although there seemed no doubt that the government would get the approval it wanted for the referendum, and no doubt worked assiduously to ensure that happened, the results were not uniform. Many of the minority areas had substantial negative votes on it, but the Burman areas prevailed. The almost Stalinist approval figures that were achieved in 2008 (92.48 percent) on another military-sponsored constitutional referendum were in sharp contrast to that of 1973.