Burma’s Supreme Court finally rejected Suu Kyi’s appeal against her house arrest. This coming just days before Suu Kyi is due to be released from house arrest. Again, there’s really no surprise at the outcome…
Category Archives: Myanmar
Why is Burma’s Supreme Court hearing the NLD’s lawsuit?
As you might have noticed, Burma’s Supreme Court agreed to hear a lawsuit by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy challenging the dissolution of the party. While this has received much media attention (for a Democratic Voice of Burma article, see here), it seems to me that most observers haven’t yet really explained the move. I’ll give you a clue: it’s not because the Supreme Court will actually rule against the ruling SPDC or the Election Commission.
Rather, it seems to me that the country’s political elites are increasingly using the courts as a means to take the blame for unpopular decisions. I’ve noticed that the judiciary seems increasingly involved in political questions, such as Suu Kyi’s trial last year (although, of course that involvement remains minimal overall). I suspect this is a deliberate decision and part of the junta’s transition to civilianized rule in which the elite rules through political institutions, not the military hierarchy.
This is a fairly common rationale for courts under authoritarian regimes. In fact, it is probably more important for authoritarian elites who do not have a strong grip on power because they do not possess the legitimacy of their democratic counterparts. In Egypt and China, courts helped reformist leaders begin dismantling the social welfare state over the objections of staunch Nasserites and Maoists. Opponents often focused their wrath on the courts, relieving the politicians of some of the heat.
However, in order for this strategy to be effective, the court must be somewhat independent in order for its rulings to be credible. If it is clearly just an agent of the political elite, then citizens will still blame the government for the court’s policy decisions. If I’m right about why Burma’s courts have become more prominent, I also believe that the junta’s tactic will fail or even backfire because the courts in Burma are notorious for their subservience to the military.
It will be interesting to see how the judiciary develops after the elections, particularly the new Constitutional Tribunal. It might also play this role of deflecting blame for unpopular policies, but unless the courts show some independence (or rule against the government occasionally) they will remain uncredible sources of policymaking.
Do war crimes pay?
According to the Washington Post, the Obama administration will support a U.N. commission of inquiry into the Burmese junta’s war crimes. The administration hopes that the probe would be a way to discredit Than Shwe and encourage younger officers to oust him (for more on Than Shwe, check out Benedict Rogers’ upcoming biography).
Will it work? Well, let’s recall our old “friend,” Omar-al Bashir. A while ago, I wrote about how the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for President Bashir might expose the impotence of the international criminal system. I recall people who knew Sudan well making the same arguments about Sudan’s ruling party that Burma activists are now making about the tatmadaw – namely, that the elites care too much about their survival to let the head honcho drag them down. However, (as the comic from Pazambuka News below shows), Bashir remains at large and, if anything, Sudan seems to have fallen from the international radar screen.
Oddly enough, so far I haven’t seen anybody mention Bashir in the context of the proposed Burma commission of inquiry. In fact, it’s not clear what form the commission of inquiry would take (it seems separate and distinct from the ICC, which in itself is an odd choice). However, the parallels are striking and suggest that a commission of inquiry without other forms of political pressure will do little to resolve Burma’s political impasse. If anything, it might worry younger officers, who probably also have dirtied their hands while rising through the ranks…
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Filed under Burma, International Criminal Court, Myanmar
Book Review: Stormier than Fiction
I’ve published a book review of Emma Larkin’s new book, Everything is Broken, in Irrawaddy. I highly recommend both this book and Larkin’s previous book, Finding George Orwell in Burma.
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Filed under Burma, Cyclone Nargis, Myanmar
Constitution Drafting Round I: Burma v. Kenya
Here’s something you don’t see every day: somebody comparing Burma’s constitution-drafting process to their own in a favorable light. Well, kind of. Here’s from Kenya’s Daily Nation:
Kenyan commentators and politicians also like to speak about how the nearly 20 years it has taken to get this far in the constitution making process is one of the longest in the world.
We checked, and it is not just “one of the longest”, but the longest. Until 2008, the record was held by Burma (Myanmar), which took 17 years to get its constitution.
If Kenya’s constitution is adopted, it will represent the longest deliberations over a constitution in world history. However, it hasn’t had a continuous national convention for the past 20 years, unlike in Myanmar. Furthermore, rumor in Rangoon claims Maung Maung started drafting Burma’s current constitution all the way back in 1988 or so – essentially, 20 years before the referendum in 2008. So, the title for longest constitution-drafting process is not yet clear.
However, as the article points out, one thing is clear: Burma and Kenya both took a long time drafting their constitutions for extremely different reasons:
The common explanations for why Kenya’s constitution review has taken so long are, first, lack of political will and, second, because it has a querulous multiparty system that no single group has been able to totally dominate in recent years.
However, Burma doesn’t have such “problems”. First, Senior General Than Shwe and his fellow officers are running one of the most repressive regimes in the world.
It just goes to show that different paths can lead to similar superficial outcomes. On that note, Zachary Elkins and Tom Ginsburg have a new article out discussing how certain procedural variables affect constitution-drafting. In short, they find that public participation can influence the presence of rights in the draft constitution, but legislative participation does not lead to an increase in the legislature’s power under the constitution. You can download it here.
[Note: the comic is from the Daily Nation website. Kenya’s church is opposed to the constitution because it might relax restrictions on abortion.]
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Filed under Burma, constitution, Myanmar
Dominic J. Nardi, Jr. 
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