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Young people have mixed feelings about Myanmar’s election, but are embracing the democratic transition in other ways.
Young people in Myanmar have a long and troublesome involvement with elite politics.
In 1988 student-led protests catalysed the end of socialism and set the country on a new road, including giving Aung San Suu Kyi her start on the political stage. The memory of this time threatens to subsume their voice in forthcoming elections.
During my time in the country, I have met some impassioned and educated young voters, some enthusiastic yet uninformed, and some who could not care less. This is unsurprising. Even less surprising is the political chemistry of ‘youth’ and ‘students’ in Myanmar.
In Myanmar’s fierce political climate young people are represented and manipulated for political ends.
The education protests earlier in the year, which saw more than 60 people charged and scores of unarmed people hit by police, showed how the memory of student activism is a powerful tool in Myanmar. Following the passing of a new controversial education law, ‘student’ protesters took to the streets.
While some actual students and young people partook, the protests were not indicative of how the majority of young people felt about the education law. Education is a sensitive subject in Myanmar and the protesters invoked the student legacy to whip up fervour.
Politicians recognised the danger of engaging with the protesters. No parliamentary or democratic solution would satisfy them. This revealed a revolutionary element of Myanmar society, and a core of citizens ultimately unwilling to accept democratic solutions.
This revolutionary spirit is not synonymous with students or young people. It would be wise to mind the distinction between young people to these revolutionary stalwarts heading into the election.
Aung San Suu Kyi confirmed she had moved beyond her roots when the NLD distanced themselves from the protests. Dr Thein Lwin, an education activist and member of the NLD Central Committee, participated in negotiations with government for the protesters. He was swiftly removed from the NLD and accused of violating party discipline. The message was clear: activism and protests or democracy and elections.
Aung San Suu Kyi is fixated on elections and politics. The NLD is having difficulty recognising the value of young people and fresh ideas. Playing it safe and keeping politics in the hands of the few at the top might ensure success, but what is success to Aung San Suu Kyi these days? It doesn’t seem to be the same as what young people in her party think it is. Hopefully, once she gets whatever it is she wants, she will refocus and remember what it’s all for.
The democratic transition in Myanmar is, ultimately, for the young people of the country. The country is their future.
Young people in Myanmar may have mixed feelings about the election but they are embracing the democratic transition in other ways.
It is relatively straight forward for the political elite to change a country’s political system; it is less simple to enact a cultural transition. Young people have embraced foreign systems. Whether they participate in the election meaningfully is less important than if they partake in liberalising moral standards and managing the entrance of foreign systems.
The new government will have control over the structural, economic and social framework of Myanmar. To that end, it is important for young people that the parliaments continue to function and pass legislation with their future in mind.
This election may be seen as the last chance for Aung San Suu Kyi to rule the country, but it is the first chance for the country to freely vote for their future. Hopefully, their vote moves the country into a democratic and stable future for young people.
An election marred by personal ambition threatens this process. Even Than Shwe knew dictatorship was not sustainable or profitable for Myanmar’s future.
Jacqueline Menager is a PhD candidate at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University.
This article forms part of New Mandala’s ‘Myanmar and the vote’ series.
Suu Kyi is way too old and stodgy to understand Burma’s millennials. Her popularity in Burma is mostly based on the memory of her iconic father Aung San (real birth name was Htein Lin), who started his political career as a University student in his early twenties. Suu Kyi studied at poshy Oxford (no revolutions allowed there!) but she did admit publicly that she is neither a human rights icon nor a democracy idol, just a regular selfish opportunistic politician like all the others in Burma now lusting for the Peacock Throne in Naypyitaw.
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Better that Burmese study at the University of Yangon, formerly a top university (in 1960), which is about as educational as three weeks of Sesame Street re-runs (actually worse). As she’s not proletarian enough, DASSK must be an outsider and traitor, with her clipped English tongue. Fine, then vote for President Thein Sein or other military men who are barely literate, most of whom were educated by fighting. Oh, I forgot, they are autocratic. What we need is a homegrown no-too-posh Democratic Burmese….emmm……like U Nu, but Peter Cohen, the non-Burmese, likes him, so no emulation of him in Myanmar must be permitted. So, I guess a Muslim has to be elected, which has as much chance as a non-Muslim in Malaysia. The three Burmese amigos here on NM are so confused, the only thing they probably would agree to, is their own election (but, no, they are too humble for that).
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Suu Kyi is a British citizen . … need I say more
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Doubt it. I believe she still carries a Burmese passport, and since the Burmese govt does not recognise dual citizenship, they’d have jumped at it and she’d have been deported pronto. Article 59(f) bars her from high political office on account of her sons. Her brother, a US citizen, is treated very differently.
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So was Tunku initially. Several MPs in Malaysia were born in Singapore. What matters (to paraphrase MLK Jr) is neither the colour of your skin, or where you may hold nationality, but the content of your character. As DASSK is prevented by fiat from being Leader of Myanmar, even Thein Sein has not prevented her from campaigning, simply because she retains British nationality. I suspect the new Myanmar Nationality Law might exclude many NLD activists currently in exile in the UK, US, Australia, Thailand and Singapore from running for Parliament. Even with a mostly Malaysian Parliament, how well has it performed ? I would say on the same scale as Zimbabwe’s “Parliament”.
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There are unfortunately several issues with this ‘analysis’, above all the rubbishing of the radical student movement asserting that young people are represented and manipulated for political ends, which in fact was the official line taken by the government. Even if that has a grain of truth in it, it also happens to be a task always being performed by the authorities – a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
The movement encompassed the majority of stakeholders in the world of education. Yet no evidence was provided for the bold assertion that the protests were not indicative of how the majority of young people felt about the education law. It’s like saying popular support for ASSK/NLD and contempt for the ruling generals and their Constitution is not how the majority of the Burmese feel about their country’s state of affairs. Educators such as Dr Thein Lwin and the parliamentarian Dr Nyo Nyo Thin are hardly radical or revolutionary elements, and they did have a calming influence on the young protesters besides taking part in the quadripartite talks reaching an agreement which the ministers reneged on during the protest march that ended in brutal state repression.
Whilst there always is a core of citizens ultimately unwilling to accept democratic solutions in any country such solutions are conspicuous by their absence in the Burmese political arena. Having a constitution, a parliament, the trappings of democracy does not necessarily mean we even have a work in progress. The dice are so loaded even ‘rule of law’ proves as malleable as ever in the regime’s hands. And since when are peaceful protests and marches not a feature of vibrant democracies?
ASSK has never organised or led any mass protest or action, only mass rallies by the grace of the generals. It wouldn’t however stop her from reaping the benefit of such ‘confrontation’ when the opportunity presents itself as in 1988.
Having said that, for all her faults she remains the only leader who continues to enjoy massive popular support and the only hope for “real change” (as her campaign slogan says) and genuine national reconciliation instead of the military elite going through the motions in order to prolong their misrule. People must rally round her and vote NLD. There is no alternative.
If to participate in the election meaningfully is less important than if they partake in liberalising moral standards and managing the entrance of foreign systems, they might as well not bother with even the minimum standards that a democratic system provides periodically (in this instance the first time for so many impassioned and educated young voters) and leave their future to the tender mercies of the ruling military elite and their foreign friends.
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Fortify Rights and Harvard Law School of International Human Rights have released a report on the violent crackdown at Letpadan of the peaceful student protest march on March 10.
It’ll only fortify the military dominated regime and protect their rights of repression and exploitation of all the myriad peoples of Burma if the USDP succeeds in stealing votes and rejecting the rest in order to dominate the new parliament after November 8. Business as usual now with a little help from their new best friends.
VOTE NLD! THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE!
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