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Myanmar
This Week in AsiaPolitics
Cyril Pereira

Opinion | The inside story of Myanmar’s troubled transition to democracy

  • Lieutenant Colonel Ye Htut charts the end of military rule in Myanmar, as well as the internal power struggles that undermined it
  • When General Than Shwe retired in 2011, he named Thein Sein as his successor, placing him on a collision course with Shwe Mann

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Shwe Mann speaks to media outside the first session of the new parliament in 2016. Photo: Xinhua
Cyril Pereira
In 2005, Lieutenant Colonel Ye Htut was assigned to Myanmar’s Ministry of Information, where he later played an active role in General Thein Sein’s 2011-16 regime. He became deputy information minister in 2012, spokesman for the president in 2013 and the minister of information from 2014-16. Hence, he was both an actor and a witness to the country’s political transition to democracy.

Ye Htut provides rich detail on the interplay between the president’s office, the military’s Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and the civilian National League for Democracy (NLD). His book profiles the main actors, their motivations and the frictions between the legislature and the president during the troubled passage to civilian power-sharing. 

The book does not dwell on the painful mass uprisings of 1988, or why the junta allowed the transition in the first place. Nevertheless, writing a tell-all book is a brave errand when many powerful players remain alive and involved in politics.

State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi at the International Court of Justice in 2019. Photo: AFP
State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi at the International Court of Justice in 2019. Photo: AFP

FROM MILITARY RULE

Since the beginning of military rule in 1962, successive juntas cited the socialist programme of independence general Aung San – the father of Aung San Suu Kyi who was assassinated in 1947 – but citizens survived at subsistence level, subject to harsh and often-arbitrary abuse. This resentment erupted into demonstrations on August 8, 1988, beginning with university students in Yangon before spreading nationwide.

The uprising propelled Suu Kyi’s status as a national democracy icon. The people rallied around her for deliverance from the military.

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