16 July 2021
(Friday)
2021 Political Update: Morten Pedersen, Senior Lecturer, University of New South Wales (Chair: Edward Aspinall, ANU)
12:00-13:00
Panel 2: Politics, Elections, and the Pandemic (Chair: TBA)
13:05-14:30
Gerard McCarthy (NUS), Anonymous Scholar, Andrea Smurra (International Growth Centre), Russell Toth (University of Sydney):
Debt, Precarity and the Politicisation of State Aid: COVID19 impacts and post-coup options
Constant Courtin (University of British Columbia):
Vanishing network: USDP’s position in Myanmar’s democratic consolidation (2015-2020)
Michael Lidauer and Gilles Saphy:
The Myanmar 2020 Elections under the Conditions of the Covid-19 Pandemic
Panel Abstracts:
Debt, Precarity and the Politicisation of State Aid: COVID-19 Impacts and Post–Coup Options
Gerard McCarthy, National University of Singapore, Anonymous Scholar, Andrea Smurra, University College London and Russel Toth, University of Sydney.
On 1st February 2021 Myanmar military’s seized power, nullified the November 2020 election and arrested Aung San Suu Kyi and democratic leaders. The subsequent political crisis has fractured pandemic response, including the roll out of a limited stimulus package drawn up by the civilian government to support companies and poor households. This paper provides a snapshot of livelihoods pressures and the politicization of limited government social support prior to the coup, and then considers options for non-state social aid in the wake of the military take-over. Informed by survey data collected amid Myanmar’s second COVID-19 wave, supplemented by interviews with a range of stakeholders before and after Myanmar’s 1st February coup, we find: pre-coup government aid was insufficient to meet even the most basic needs of many vulnerable households and business owners for more than a few days; and yet distribution of social aid in the months before the November 2020 election was viewed by minority party supporters as partisan campaigning by the National League for Democracy government. Despite the politicisation of aid, as government support was limited in scope and local welfare groups faced a shortage of donations many households and entrepreneurs were forced to take new loans - often at predatory rates from informal providers - to survive the pandemic. As a result even before the coup and paralysis of Myanmar’s economic and political crisis many had already accrued heavy debts that would take years to pay off without substantive government action and relief. In the wake of governmental social aid ceasing due to the post-coup implosion of governance , we conclude by: surveying immediate options for providing relief to households via non-state networks including microfinance institutions; and arguing for rapid investment in state-led safety nets and debt forgiveness once civilians return to power.
Vanishing Network: USDP’s Position in Myanmar’s Democratic Consolidation (2015- 2020)
Constant Courtin, University of British Colombia.
Myanmar’s democratic transition was brutally suppressed on February, 1st, 2021. In 10 years, Myanmar organised two free and fair general elections (2015 and 2020), both times leading the NLD to secure a landslide victory. In comparison, little attention has been put into understanding the collapse of its main opponent and military-proxy party, the USDP. However, the performance of the USDP are crucial to unearth one of the many causes that might have lead the military to stage a coup rather than to continue committing to the democratic bargaining game. In this paper, I argue that the military coup can be understood through the poor electoral performance of the USDP. Those poor performances signaled by the Tatmadaw that their political position weakened.
More precisely, I develop a causal mechanism that links USDP’s victories in areas where we would not expect the USDP to have won to its clientelist nature – compared with the relatively more programmatic nature of the NLD. The USDP victories can be explained by the level of state capacity of the constituency. State capacity does affect electoral outcome through the trust voters put in the local administration. Where voters’ trust is low, the credibility of programmatic parties such as the NLD is lowered, and voters will tend to rely on clientelism for the provision of public goods. Where voters rely on clientelist practice for the provision of public goods, the probability of victory of clientelist parties is increased. In this context, elections signaled the Tatmadaw that their network (that of USDP in fact) vanished, illustrating their weakened political position, and participating to their decision to stage a coup.
The Myanmar 2020 Elections and the Conditions of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Michael Lidauer and Gilles Saphy, independent consultants and elections experts
The 1 February coup d’état of 2021 has been justified by the Myanmar military with an underlying “electoral narrative”, claiming that the elections were manipulated in behalf of the NLD, while election observers have testified that the election results represented the will of the voters. Like few other elections globally, the Myanmar 2020 elections took place under the conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic that shaped the process profoundly: The freedoms of movement and assembly were curtailed during the pre-electoral period while governmental aid and messaging around crisis management increased the advantages of incumbency. Political actors demanded to postpone the elections while the Union Election Commission (UEC) stood firm in its plans to hold elections on 8 November.
The Ministry of Public Health (MoHS) and the UEC adopted stringent rules to protect voters, candidates, and electoral personnel in an effort to avoid the elections becoming a major source of contagion. Stay-at-home orders for 72 townships and other safety regulations constituted obstacles for political parties to campaign freely, hindered civil society organisations in providing scrutiny as observers, and curtailed journalists’ capacity to report first-hand. On election day, however, polling stations were equipped with protective material, and voters exercised their newly acquired “civic duty” with diligence, raising turnout despite the pandemic. All these factors combined shaped the elections like no other, as the paper will show.
Panel 3: Foreign Relations and Cross-Border Issues (Chair: TBA)
14:45-16:30
Nicholas Coppel:
The nature, scope and limits of international responses to Myanmar’s coup
Hunter Marston (ANU) and Andrea Passeri (University of Malaya):
The Pendulum of Neutralism: Myanmar’s Shifting Approach to Non-Alignment from 2010-2020
Anonymous Scholar and Tomas Martin:
Exploring Myanmar Prison Department’s Responses to Covid-19 and the Implications of the Coup
Panel Abstracts:
The nature, scope and limits of international responses to Myanmar’s coup
Nicholas Coppel, Monash University
This paper considers the actions and reactions of nations, international organisations and businesses in the first six months after the coup. Many but not all of the early responses are examined to identify commonalities and differences. The paper assesses the utility of international condemnations of the coup and the calls for an end to violence and the release of detainees. It also considers the responses of the international business community since the coup. The paper discusses pleas to recognise the National Unity Government and the handling of competing claims to represent Myanmar in international organisations. In the context of calls on the international community to “save Myanmar”, it considers whether the United Nations Responsibility to Protect doctrine could be invoked and discusses a mediation role for ASEAN. Finally, it weighs the arguments for engagement against the risks of contributing to the legitimisation of the military council.
The Pendulum of Neutralism: Myanmar’s Shifting Approach to Non-Alignment from 2010-2020
Hunter Marston, Australian National University and Andrea Passeri, University of Malaya.
Since independence, Myanmar has shown a firm commitment to a neutral, non-aligned foreign policy, to prevent it from falling into the orbit of a great power or bloc of powers. The paramount goal for policymakers has historically been to preserve national independence and freedom of action abroad, leading various generations of leaders to avoid multilateral or bilateral security arrangements that could jeopardise its non-aligned stance. The dilemma facing Burmese leaders has revolved around the desire to implement a positive, proactive blend of non-alignment, aimed at expanding and diversifying international partnerships, and, on the other hand, the temptation of resorting to a more inward-looking, reactive ‘negative neutralism’, retrenching from international engagement and embracing isolationist policies. After tracing the historical origins of Myanmar’s neutralism, this paper compares and contrasts the foreign policies of Thein Sein (2011-2016) and Aung San Suu Kyi (2016-2021) by analysing each administration’s worldview and strategies. It utilises discourse analysis and foreign policy analysis to distinguish Myanmar’s recent return to negative neutralism from the relatively short-lived period of outward engagement and proactive positive neutralism from 2011-2016, and has major implications for the country’s ongoing political crisis since the military coup in February.
Exploring Myanmar Prison Department’s Responses to Covid-19 and the Implications of the Coup
Tomas Martin and Anonymous Scholars
Since the military coup of 1st February 2021, the military-led State Administration Council (SAC) has arrested and detained thousands of people who have organized and participated in anti-junta protests, continuing a deep tradition of political imprisonment, torture and inhumane treatment. Even before the coup Myanmar prisons were characterized by deplorable conditions, climates of fear and harsh military discipline. Additionally, for over a year the prison system, burdened by a violent history and low capacity, has been struggling to respond adequately to the COVID-19 virus. This has involved various restrictions, pardons, ad hoc training and piecemeal protection efforts. This paper explores Myanmar Prison Department’s (MPD) responses to Covid-19 including consideration of the way the coup is making already difficult matters worse. Even though the SAC claims to follow the COVID precaution procedures and guidelines from the Health Department, our analysis indicates that the mass incarceration of members of the civil disobedience movement seriously aggravates staff’s and prisoners’ vulnerabilities and undercuts MPD’s feeble COVID responses. Contextualised by field research on family visits, gender and imprisonment, and prison governance, careful consideration of the MPD’s early responses to the pandemic, as well as more recent accounts of recently released detainees this paper raises important questions about the way the coup is affecting prison life and influencing the MPD’s response to the pandemic. The paper identifies problems, challenges and dilemmas based on the lived experiences of prisoners and reflects more generally on the enhanced vulnerabilities of detainees in post-coup Myanmar.