1

Aung Ko Ko Toe

Paper 1

Political Science 01 – Domestic Politics in Myanmar

28th January, 2017

Review on Myanmar Transition

Myanmar is in the transition period. NLD Party won landslide victory in 2015 election. This isthe second victory for NLD. NLD won likely 1990 election. U Tin Aye who ex-general,chairman of election commission in 2015, tried to become free and fair election. Aung San SuuKyi became the founding mother for Myanmar’s democracy. Su Kyi holds international powerand domestic power politically. She will try to establish democratic principle and enforcedemocratic institution. Myanmar still had lack of infrastructure and low quality of humanresources. Corrupt bureaucracy of Myanmar can limit successful democratic way. But peoplebelieve to go forward. Especially, international countries watch carefully Myanmar transitionalcondition. Peace Process and Civil-Military Relation can hard for NLD. NLD government has noready package for national reconciliation in peace process. Cease-fire Agreement betweenArmed Group and Army need to more detail in table talk discussions. NLD government seems touse Thein Sein’s ex-peace process mechanism but she change design.

Myanmar has various challenges for state building and nation building. This is likely tocomputer composition as software and hardware. Sate building likes as hardware of computerand nation building likes as software. Lack of infrastructure and effective policies have inrestructuring of hardware. There are struggle for politician to be success democratic statebuilding in Myanmar. Lack of capacity and lack of financial resource are still in political parties.According to ideology, leaders of political parties must be construct democratic cadre. Transitionto democratization process are very important enforce democratic institutions in various sectors.Institutionalization will hard for revolutionary period long time. Long time struggling periodmade general weak for restructuring, reconstruction of modern state building. Myanmar wants tolikes as Singapore, need to connect global, need to build-up human capacity, need to effectivepolicies and finally need to strong leader. We expected to ‘Su’ as historical strong leader. It hadmany time for Le Kwan Yew but there is no much time for ‘Su’.

People can decide democratic transition success or not. The cause of transitional success dependson social culture and political culture of people. Myanmar social and political culture has veryrigid and divided style according to historical background but they are solid when strong externalenemies, for example at the time of colonial rule in Burma. Myanmar democratic oppositiongroups were solid since having great enemy military authoranism. Case of started dividinghappen 2010 election between NLD and NDF party. NLD hold no vote in this election but NDFhold participate. Solidarity is still important of Asian political culture. Especially, NLD shouldgovern by warmly welcome to educated and technocrats from away Myanmar land.