Not so fast.

All those people who have been filling the streets in Burma, throwing their hats gleefully into the air and shouting ecstatically that democracy has triumphed after a half-century of military rule? They need to calm down.

While it seems clear that the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won over 80 per cent of the popular vote and a clear majority of seats in both the lower and upper houses of parliament in last weekend’s election, it’s not as simple as that.

The reality is that Burma, also known as Myanmar, remains under military control and will be for the foreseeable future. Suu Kyi and her party are going to have to box very deftly over the next few years if Burma is going to make the transition to a full democracy.

In 2008, before they allowed some political liberalization in order to get international sanctions lifted, the generals changed the constitution to ensure they kept all significant levers of power in their own hands.

The military is allotted 25 per cent of the seats in both houses of parliament and a third of the seats in provincial assemblies. The backing of more than 75 per cent of the members of parliament is needed to change the constitution. So the generals have a veto on any changes.

In addition, the ministers of defence, home affairs and border affairs — all the departments dealing with national security — must be serving military officers. And behind this already formidable façade is the National Defence and Security Council. This is made up of the president and two vice-presidents, the two speakers of the houses of parliament, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and his deputy, and the ministers of defence, home affairs, border affairs and foreign affairs. The council has the power to disband parliament and rule directly if it feels Burma faces a ‘state of emergency’.

There is also the stark fact that after more than 60 years of military rule, most of the senior positions in government departments, state-owned corporations and influential public institutions are occupied by serving, seconded or retired military officers. Burma’s democracy, as welcome as it is, remains a thin and insubstantial veil fluttering over the face of what remains a military regime.

The task for Suu Kyi and the NLD now will be to try to persuade the generals that it is safe to hand over true power to the civilian parliament and government. This will be a slow and perilous task. The generals have a very low tolerance for risk. At any moment they may decide democracy is far too dangerous an adventure for a multi-ethnic country like Burma, where communal tensions are always on display and regional separatist wars have gone on for decades.

In dealing with the generals, Suu Kyi has the advantage of being the daughter of General Aung San, the architect of modern Burma, who was assassinated six months before the country’s independence from Britain in 1947. Even so, the military has done all it can to prevent her from becoming president. In dealing with the generals, Suu Kyi has the advantage of being the daughter of General Aung San, the architect of modern Burma, who was assassinated six months before the country’s independence from Britain in 1947. Even so, the military has done all it can to prevent her from becoming president.

They have re-imposed military rule several times in the past when political reform seemed — in their eyes at least — to be stoking social chaos. They’ll do it again if they feel duty-bound to save the nation.

The last time they did it was in 1990, when the NLD won about 85 per cent of the vote in parliamentary elections, much as it did this week. The military decided it was too dangerous to hand over power to the NLD at a time when 15 minority ethnic groups were mounting armed insurrections against the central government. The military also feared retribution for its violent suppression of opposition and dissent. So the generals simply annulled the election.

This time, however, there are reasons to be optimistic that the military will be less willing to discard the democratic process than it was in 1990.

For a start, there’s the money.

In 2010, the generals released Suu Kyi from detention, where she had languished for most of the previous 20 years, and created what it called a ‘civilian government’. This was, in reality, made up of soldiers in suits. But the promise of further liberalisation encouraged several countries to ease sanctions imposed because of the military’s atrocious human and political rights record.

Burma’s economy leapt ahead with the lifting of embargoes on trade and investment. Many of the big winners from this windfall are the generals, who retain control of the main strands of the economy. They will want to avoid the re-imposition of sanctions if at all possible.

The national security situation also looks a lot better than it did in 1990.

In mid-October the national government signed a ceasefire agreement with eight of the 15 armed ethnic groups seeking autonomy or independence. The limited agreement leaves some of the best-armed and most active insurgent groups, such as the Kachin and the Wa, still at loggerheads with the Naypyidaw government. But the military has accepted the notion of Burma becoming a federation, which has the potential for making possible a political solution to the ethnic unrest.

Then there’s the influence of Suu Kyi herself. While she was under house arrest she was the Princess in the Tower, a potent symbol of the aspirations of Burma’s 54 million people, just as Nelson Mandela on Robben Island was for South Africa. But after her release in 2010 many doubted that she would have the skills and stamina to lead the NLD in its long drawn-out confrontation with the generals.

Her detractors (so far) have been wrong.

Suu Kyi has emerged as a highly pragmatic politician — sometimes uncomfortably so. For example, her failure to speak out forcefully against the continuing violent persecution of the Muslim Rohingya minority in northwest Burma troubled a lot of her international supporters. But most of the country’s majority ethnic Burmans see the Rohingya as illegal migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, ineligible for Burmese citizenship despite being in the country for many generations. Suu Kyi’s silence was a pragmatic response to her base supporters.

In dealing with the generals, Suu Kyi has the advantage of being the daughter of General Aung San, the architect of modern Burma, who was assassinated six months before the country’s independence from Britain in 1947. Suu Kyi has shown great skill and toughness in using her patriotic credentials in dealing with the generals.

Even so, the military has done all it can to prevent her from becoming president. One of the provisions the generals put in the constitution bans anyone with a foreign spouse or children from becoming president. Suu Kyi is the widow of Oxford University historian Michael Aris and she has two sons who have British nationality.

With the NLD on the road to winning most of the 330 freely elected seats in the 440-seat lower house and also of the 168 non-military positions in the 224-seat upper house, Suu Kyi has staked out a bold position. She says she intends to “make all the decisions” in the new government, irrespective of who emerges in the formal post of president.

Her intention to ignore the constitution and play the role of Burma’s head of government makes political and strategic sense. But the NLD’s election victory is just the beginning of a risky game — not the end of it.

Jonathan Manthorpe is the author of “Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan,” published by Palgrave-Macmillan. He has been a foreign correspondent and international affairs columnist for nearly 40 years. He was European bureau chief for the Toronto Star and then Southam News in the late 1970s and the 1980s. In 1989 he was appointed Africa correspondent by Southam News and in 1993 was posted to Hong Kong to cover Asia. For the last few years he has been based in Vancouver, writing international affairs columns for what is now the Postmedia Group. He left the group last year and now writes for a range of newspapers and websites. [email protected]

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