Bertil Lintner
Myanmar's government has announced democratic elections will be held on November 7 and Western pundits are busy speculating whether the polls will lead to a new, more open era in the troubled country's modern history. A far more important and potentially sinister plan is unfolding as the country's military rulers seek to consolidate a vision of empire that affords them a permanent grip on the country and its many nationalities.
A new nation is being built, one that military leaders view as the coming of the Fourth Myanmar Empire. In line with that vision, two decades ago the military gave the country a new name, changing it from Burma to Myanmar. Now, a grand new capital known as Naypyidaw, or "Abode of Kings", has been erected in what used to be wasteland in the central part of the country.
Myanmar's armed forces are among Southeast Asia's largest, and, if their empire dream is ever realized, they will be equipped with missiles and perhaps even nuclear devices. The creation of a new parliament, which will be housed in a gigantic edifice built in traditional Myanmar style in the new capital, is also part of the grand plan. Sharing power with pro-democracy parties, even "moderate" ones, however, is not.
Significantly, the upcoming election has been used to pressure nearly a dozen former rebel groups, which for the past two decades have had ceasefire agreements with the government, to finally give up their autonomous status and convert their respective armies into "Border Guard Forces" under the command of the Myanmar army. Their political wings may then be recognized as political parties, which will be allowed to participate in the November election, but on the same terms as all other parties that have registered for the polls.
Registration, a cumbersome process that involves paying a 50,000 kyat registration fee for each candidate, must be completed by August 30. That fee equals US$500 per head, a huge sum for most ordinary Myanmar citizens. Only the junta's own political mass organization, the Union Solidarity and Development Party and its affiliated National Unity Party, have had the resources to field candidates for all seats nationwide.
Revisionist history
The way forward for Myanmar first became clear on Armed Forces Day 2006. Traditionally held each year on March 27, the holiday was originally meant to commemorate the day in 1945 when the country's nationalists, led by Aung San, shifted sides to join the Allied powers and turned their weapons against their former patron and benefactor, the Imperial Japanese Army.
The 2006 event represented the first time the parade was held at Naypyidaw, to where the government was formally moved in 2005. Addressing a crowd of 12,000 soldiers, junta leader Gen Than Shwe proclaimed: "Our tatmadaw [armed forces] should be a worthy heir to the traditions of the capable tatmadaws established by noble kings Anawratha, Bayinnaung and Alaungpaya."
None of those kings had fought against the Imperial Japanese Army, but Anawratha had in 1044 founded the First Myanmar, or Burmese, Empire and established his capital at the temple city of Pagan on the banks of the Irrawaddy river, southwest of today's Mandalay. He conquered Thaton, the capital of the Mon - major rivals of the Burmans for control of the central plains - and expanded his empire down to the Andaman Sea.
Bayinnaung was the country's most celebrated warrior king. He reigned from 1551 to 1581 and conquered territories north of Pagan, parts of the Shan plateau in the east, and pushed as far east as Chiang Mai, in today's northern Thailand, and Vientiane in Laos. He was the most prominent ruler of the Second Myanmar Empire and ruled from Pegu in the central plains.
Alaungpaya reigned in the 18th century and was the first king of the Konbaung Dynasty, or the third and last of the Myanmar empires. Alaungpaya also fought the Mon, and his successor, Hsinbyushin, sacked the Thai capital of Ayutthaya in 1767, a deed for which the Thais, judging by their history books, have never forgiven the Burmese.
The Konbaung kings were defeated by the British in the three Anglo-Myanmar wars of the 19th century and the country became a British colony. In 1885, Mandalay, the last of several capitals of the Konbaung Dynasty fell and its king, Thibaw, was led away by the British in front of the mourning and wailing crowd who had come to take farewell of the last monarch of an independent Myanmar state. He was sent, with his once-powerful wife, Supayalat, and their children into exile in Ratanagiri in India, where he died in 1916.
Fast forward to the present and standing at Naypyidaw's parade ground are newly erected, larger-than-life statues of the three warrior kings, who Than Shwe evidently sees as his empire-building role models. He has also bid to form a unitary state that is fundamentally different in nature from Aung San's concept of ''unity in diversity'', federalism and some kind of parliamentary democracy. In Than Shwe's ''Myanmar'' everybody is a ''Myanmar'' and subjects of the present rulers.
Notably there are no portraits of independence hero Aung San in Naypyidaw. But building a new capital has always been a major prerogative of the rulers of all three previous Myanmar empires - and the founders of the Fourth Empire are no exception. The size of the new capital's buildings and width of its streets and avenues reflect their vision of grandeur.
The November election, assimilation of rebel groups and subjugation of other opposition forces are together the final stage in a transformative process that arguably began in 1989, when the junta changed the name of the country. The generals insisted that Myanmar is the correct name for the country because it includes both Burmans and minorities.
That argument, however, has caused confusion in academic circles. An official history of the country's nationalist movement, published by the government in 1976, stated that ''Myanmar'' meant only the old kingdom of Mandalay, while ''Burma'' (bama in Burmese) is ''the country where different nationalities such as the Kachin, Karen, Kayah, Chin, Pa-O, Palaung, Mon, Myanma, Rakhine, Shan reside reside.'' Significantly, Aung San and his comrades called their movement Dohbama Asiayone, ''Our Burma Association'', and not Dohmyanmar Asiayone.
Now the ruling military junta claims that the opposite is true. The official mouthpiece Working People's Daily, now known as the New Light of Myanmar, stated on May 27, 1989, the day the name change was made official: "Bama ... is one of the national groups of the Union only … myanma means all the national racial groups who are resident of the union such as Kachin, Kayah, Karen, Chin, Mon, Rakhine, Bama and Shan."
At the same time, place names, especially in Shan State, were changed to sound more ''Myanmar'': Pang Tara, Kengtung, Lai-Hka, Hsenwi and Hsipaw - place names that have a meaning in the Shan language - were renamed Pindaya, Kyaington, Laycha, Theinli and Thibaw, which sound Burmese but have no meaning in any language.
Cultural Revolution
Dutch Burma scholar Gustaaf Houtman calls this development the ''Myanmafication of Burma'', which he describes as a move away from the original idea of a multiethnic federation - agreed to by Aung San and the leaders of the ethnic minorities before independence in 1948 - to the new ''Myanmar'' identity propagated by the military. The 1989 name changes marked the beginning of this cultural revolution, which included a military-appointed commission tasked with rewriting the country's history to better suit the agenda of the present power-holders.
New museums have been built across the country to educate the public about the central role the military purportedly has played throughout centuries of Myanmar history. School textbooks are continuously rewritten to serve the same purpose. Many TV soap operas have the same theme, where the country's many ethnic groups unite under the leadership of a militaristic 19th century king to oppose the onslaught of Western colonialists.
Soon 330 elected members of parliament, along with 110 non-elected representatives of the armed forces, will soon take their seats in the enormous new building that has been erected in Naypyidaw to practice ''discipline-flourishing democracy'', as the generals have termed their unique vision of the country's future political system.
If the May 2008 referendum for the new constitution, on which the country's new political system is based, is anything to go by, the outcome of the November election is preordained. The new constitution was approved in a referendum by more than 90% of the electorate, the authorities announced. No campaigning was allowed and the press was forbidden to report on the barely 10% who voted against.
On August 19, Myanmar's tightly controlled media published an official notification stating that candidates wishing to address the public must apply for permission at least seven days in advance. Candidates are also prohibited from ''causing any disturbances in public places and disrupting traffic".
In case lawmakers cause trouble after they have been elected, Article 396 of the new constitution ensures that they can be dismissed for ''misbehavior''. And if the ''democratic'' situation really gets out of hand, Article 413 gives the president the right to hand over executive as well as judicial powers to the commander-in-chief of the Defense Services.
All is thus set for the rise of the Fourth Myanmar Empire. According to a report released this month by the US-based non-governmental organization the National Democratic Institute, Myanmar's new constitution has established "a structure designed to perpetuate military rule", not to change it. Than Shwe may retire, but that is no guarantee for a new democratic or any less authoritarian order.
So far, no credible outside observer has been able to identify any ''young Turks'' bent on enacting genuine democratic reforms lurking in the wings. And despite much wishful thinking by foreign analysts and commentators, Than Shwe biographer Benedict Rogers argues that all the structures that have been put in place signal that the military is geared to remain in power for the foreseeable future.
When Myanmar's old strongman, Gen Ne Win, was alive, several analysts and experts predicted that the country would change for the better once he passed from the scene. He retired from direct power in 1988 and indeed Myanmar did change after Ne Win. But the next generation of military leaders led by Than Shwe turned out to be even more repressive - and obsessed with the role of historical kings. Not even Ne Win shifted the site of the national capital and sought to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Nor did he divine to revive and reinvent the glory and power of bygone Myanmar empires.
Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and currently a writer with Asia Pacific Media Services
