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Banyan
The Burmese road to ruin
Aug 13th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Once a model for Myanmar’s generals of successful autocracy, Indonesia now has even more to
teach them
Illustration by M. Morgenstern
IF THERE was ever a role model for Than Shwe, Myanmar’s vicious, nutty, reclusive “senior general”, it
was Suharto, Indonesia’s late kleptocrat. Suharto was the senior general who had everything. His fabulous
wealth made the greedy Burmese generals look like paupers. His children parcelled out the economy as if
it were the family vegetable plot. Feted rather than shunned, he was dubbed “father of development” by
his fan club, and even many foreigners agreed: development banks needed him more than he needed
them. And he held power for 32 years. No wonder the Burmese junta gazed admiringly at Indonesia.
The two countries do have much in common. Both are fabulously rich in resources—hydrocarbons,
minerals, timber. Both reached postcolonial independence by way of Japanese occupation. Both are
multiethnic states haunted by the twin spectres of racial tension and a separatist periphery. And both
have armies with inflated views of their importance to national survival.
A fine recent book on Indonesia by Marcus Mietzner of the Australian National University* highlights five
features of the Indonesian armed forces. Four are also shown by Myanmar’s. First is the army’s
(debatable) view of itself as the main bringer of independence. Second is its disdain for periods of civilian
rule in the 1950s, dismissed as chaotic, corrupt and, through the spread of regional rebellions, dangerous
to the country’s integrity. Out of this disdain grew a third feature, a doctrine known in Indonesia as
dwifungsi, or dual function, of running the country as well as defending it, and a fourth, the entrenchment
of the armed forces in the infrastructure of the state. Last year Myanmar’s benighted people were forced
to endorse a dwifungsi constitution in a referendum. Under it, ludicrously undemocratic elections are to be
held in 2010, giving some veneer of legitimacy to the soldiers’ unbudgeable heft in parliament and
government.
The fifth point, too, may yet apply to Than Shwe. What Mr Mietzner terms the “increasingly sultanistic
character” of the ageing Suharto’s rule opened up a rift with his fellow generals. When the economy
collapsed in 1998 and the threat of anarchy loomed, Suharto looked over his shoulder and found nobody
was following him. In the end, dictators, however unpopular, despotic and incompetent, rarely fall
because they have too many enemies. They fall because they have too few friends left.
Fall, however, Suharto did, in 1998, disqualifying Indonesia’s recent history as a serviceable model for
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