Burma’s Convention Process Lacks Public Participation

National Conventions: Burma in Comparison

By Aung Naing Oo, Mizzima News (www.mizzima.com)

March 5, 2004

Authoritarian rulers often organize national conventions or conferences. They do so when they realize that their legitimacy to rule has been eroded irreparably. Years of their misrule have stripped bare their country’s resources. Despicable violations of human rights make their citizens yearn for freedom and the prevalence of rule of law. And they begin to call for reforms. Under these circumstances, autocratic governance may no longer be possible.

Despots are despots, however. They do what they can do best. But resorting to brute force to stay in power is no longer viable in this day and age. So they change or attempt to change constitutions by holding conventions, which often gives the appearance of broader participation by the citizenries.

In some cases, such as Burma, the authoritarian rulers simply try to produce a charter favorable to themselves. The objective is simple; to further their rule, albeit under a different guise, through newfound legitimacy. If successful, they can reap hefty rewards the same way they did during their unchecked rules.

Many developing countries in the world, particularly those recently transformed into democratic states after prolonged civil wars, embrace public participation in constitutional writing. However, the Burmese military has been doing the opposite.

The case of Burma resembles two of Africa’s Sub-Saharan countries - Togo and Zaire. Faced with prospects of State failure, the two nations convened national conferences – both in 1991. The conferences were used as a forum for opposing groups to discuss and negotiate political issues in a peaceful, structured environment.

In the case of Togo, the country’s strongman, Eyadema, succeeded in controlling and neutralizing the process, sometimes by the use of force and intimidation. In Zaire, the entire process was a farce because it was merely designed to regain some international legitimacy. In both countries, the most crucial flaw was the degree of control over the democratic transition by autocrats and their ability to impose conditions on the process.

Other African countries such as Benin, Congo (Brazzaville) and Mali went through similar arrangements. In Benin, the military installed president, Mathieu Kerekou, organized a national reconciliation conference in 1990 as part of political concessions. He even appointed the Archbishop of Cotonou as Chairman of the Convention. Although it provided moral legitimacy, by the time the conference was held, President Kerekou had lost control of political events.

In Congo, the erosion of political monopoly by the ruling Marxist-Leninist government led to an all-party conference in early 1991. But it was immediately suspended due to a dispute between the rulers and their opposition over the balance of representation at the conference. In contrast to Togo and Zaire, the opposition triumphed in Congo. The president of the communist government, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, lost his powers but was allowed to retain his presidency during the transition. Democracy was installed in 1992. Unfortunately however, President Sassou-Nguesso returned to power by force in 1998.

Mali in 1991 was a more successful example. Malians were able to avoid the downfalls of Togo and Zaire. Their national conference was deemed inclusive, as 1,800 delegates from 42 political parties and 100 associations participated in the deliberations. The major difference from the other African nations however could have been that the Malian process was initiated by a reform-minded military leader, who did not take part in the elections following the ratification of the new constitution.

Even Zimbabwe’s government led by Robert Mugabe, one of the most closed regimes in Africa with an appalling human rights records similar to the Burmese junta’s, offered more meaningful public consultation on the drafting of a new constitution in 1999. Although the process was filled with the ruling party’s manipulations, it held more than 4,000 meetings nationwide and interacted directly in public meetings with more than half a million people. The cautionary tale of Zimbabwe’s recent experience was the eventual rejection of the constitutional draft by the population when it was submitted to a referendum vote in 2000.

Other transitional countries provide better examples for Burma. Among them, the South African Constitution of 1996 is widely regarded as a role model. Spanning from 1990 to 1996, the whole process of drafting a new constitution was first negotiated between former adversaries: the National Party of the Apartheid regime and the African National Congress. The negotiations later included smaller political and ethnic parties, which resulted in the 1993 agreement on an interim constitution.

South Africa’s process was conducted in full-scale demonstration of participatory constitution-making: a media and advertising campaign educated the public about the new constitution, the public outreach program received two million submissions, many advocacy groups participated, professional associations and other interests worked together with the Parliament, and the final review process was conducted by the Constitutional Court.

Likewise, Eritreans engaged in massive constitutional education and consultations throughout the new nation between 1994 and 1997. In 2002, members of the Rwanda Drafting Commission and thousands of trained assistants mobilized public participation in the writing of their new constitution. Recently in Kenya, the constitutional review process operated under a people-driven process whose final product will be a people-owned constitution.

Compared to these processes, the missing link in the Burmese process is the public’s participation and their ownership of the sacred contract of the land.

Indeed, rather than moving toward democracy, the National Convention in Burma is an impediment to the restoration of democracy. According to legal scholar Janelle Diller, the Convention is “not only failing to create structures of accountability and transparency but also obstructing process for growth of independent political life.”

Just as in Togo and Zaire, the Burmese junta has used a dual strategy of fast/slow approaches. The first approach is to both keep control of the initiative and not give sufficient time for the opposition to organize. The slow approach consists of delaying the speed of the subsequent process in order to buy time to construct support and deny that support to the opposition by, for instance, trying to split the opposition or co-opting it into the majority.

In many African examples, what ultimately determined the outcome of their conferences was the asymmetry of economic and military power between the opponents. The harsh reality in Burma is that the Burmese junta holds all of the resources and power necessary to influence the entire outcome. In contrast, pro-democratic groups are struggling in limbo under severe repression and restrictions. In that equation, the stance of many of Burma’s neighboring governments, as well as that of the ethnic resistance armies who have been forced by the arm-twisting pressure of the SPDC to welcome the Convention, have inadvertently strengthened this power asymmetry in favor of the regime.

Adapted from the Burma Fund’s January 2004 Policy Brief entitled ‘Mind the Gap: Can the SPDC’s National Convention Bring Democracy to Burma?’

Aung Naing Oo is a research associate with Washington-based The Burma Fund.