She has also stressed the importance of overcoming the poverty that the general population has sunk into during the past five decades of military rule.
Progress in both areas will not be easy due to the vested interests of military leaders and their longtime business partners. These are the people who will lose relative wealth and status if the reforms required to bring prosperity to the whole country are undertaken. The first order of business for Suu Kyi is to consolidate sufficient power to co-opt or overcome these vested interests.
Consolidating political power as a former opposition leader in a country undergoing a transition to democracy is incredibly difficult. It cannot be done openly. Inevitably it requires compromises that call into question the leader’s commitment to the goals of her or his election campaign and these compromises can easily lead to a disaffected electorate. It also cannot be done quickly. A frontal assault on key sources of military and economic power may have been successful in some eastern European countries following the collapse of the Iron Curtain, but Suu Kyi is working in a very different political, historic, and geographic context. An approach that looks like a chess game played out over months and even years is more likely to succeed.
The experience of Indonesian President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) sheds some light on the challenge facing Suu Kyi. Of course Indonesia is unlike Myanmar in many respects, but both Jokowi and Suu Kyi were catapulted to leadership positions as ‘outsiders’, personalities unconnected to the longstanding holders of military and economic power.
Jokowi was a small business owner when elected mayor of Solo, a mid-size city in Central Java, in 2005. By focusing on the concerns of ordinary people and doing little to cater to the elite he became immensely popular, winning re-election as mayor in 2010 with 90 per cent of the vote. His reputation as a doer, in contrast to the talkers more often elected to such offices, made him the leading opposition candidate in the 2012 election for governor of Jakarta. He won handily with 54 per cent of the vote against the incumbent governor.
Two years later the major political parties were wooing Jokowi to be their candidate in the election for president of Indonesia. He opted to remain with the nationalist-populist Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle led by former president Megawati Sukarnoputri. The opposing ticket was led by Prabowo Subianto, a highly controversial retired Lieutenant General in the Army and son-in-law of former president Suharto. Prabowo was the epitome of an insider leading a coalition of status quo parties. Jokowi was the quintessential outsider, making uncomfortable compromises with party leader Megawati who was more inclined toward traditional deal making than progressive policies.
Eight months before the July 2014 election, Jokowi led Prabowo in one highly regarded poll by 62 to 23 per cent. His lead steadily narrowed to 46 per cent to Prabowo’s 45 per cent one month before the election, with momentum clearly favoring Prabowo. Jokowi’s victory with 53 per cent of the vote was achieved in large part through an exceptional social media campaign orchestrated by young Indonesians. Post election, his popularity rating rose to 72 per cent.
But only four months after Jokowi’s inauguration 75 per cent of Indonesians were dissatisfied with his performance. Why? Because in his first 100 days in office he had not succeeded in ‘cleaning house’ or achieving many of his other campaign promises. But then his poll numbers started rising again: 41 per cent favourable in June 2015, 52 per cent at the end of his first year in office, and 69 per cent in October 2016 at the end of his second year.
Jokowi was consolidating power by making compromises viewed as unsavoury by his strongest supporters. As he did this, he was able to move ahead with sensible policy measures previously blocked by the elite.
This pattern of disillusionment with the performance of a popular opposition leader is underway in Myanmar. Since Aung San Suu Kyi became head of the government in April, scepticism about her performance has steadily grown, reinforced by foreign advocacy groups with little understanding of the power structure inside Myanmar. She has not launched a frontal attack on any vested interests and has made compromises that seem inconsistent with the reformist promises of her election campaign.
Hopefully Suu Kyi will be as successful in consolidating power as Jokowi has been so far. It will most likely be harder for her to do and take longer. But if she succeeds, the disappointments from her compromises in the short term will be more than compensated for in the long term.
Lex Rieffel is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution, Washington D.C.
I doubt that a comparison between Jokowi and Aung San Suu Kyi is very helpful.
Jokowi’s father was a carpenter, Aung San Suu Kyi’s parent, Aung San, is considered the father of her country. She herself has been one of Myanmar’s most prominent figures for many years and was long a world famous political prisoner while Jokowi was making furniture and selling it in Solo. As far as I know, Jokowi has never served time, though he has executed a lot of drug traffickers.
If Suu Kyi has to be compared with any Indonesian politician, one could start with Megawati, Sukarno’s daughter. But that comparison would be a pretty shaky one as well. Megawati never spent a day behind bars. She indeed made it to the presidential palace but only long enough to complete her predecessor’s interrupted term.
Jokowi was an ‘outsider’ whose main business partner, Luhut Panjaitan, was a typical New Order military officer. He rose to be a lieutenant-general under Soeharto, was appointed ambassador to Singapore by Habibie, then trade minister by Gus Dur. He then became a very wealthy businessman. Not surprisingly, this long-term ‘insider’ has played various key roles under President Jokowi.
It is true that, as the author states, Prabowo led a ‘coalition of status quo parties’. But Jokowi also led a coalition of status quo parties.
For example, Hanura, the party set up by retired General Wiranto, joined Jokowi’s coalition and Gerindra, Prabowo’s party, naturally was on Prabowo’s side.
Some of the status quo parties that first supported Prabowo now support Jokowi.
It is probably fair to say that there are no anti-status quo parties in Indonesia, though the country certainly needs some. Yudhoyono’s Democrat Party eventually showed, despite early promise, that it too wasn’t against the status quo.
The ex-president has reminded us of his traditional and family dynasty-oriented outlook very recently by allowing, or prompting, his elder son Agus Harimurti to abandon his army career prematurely and contest the Jakarta gubernatorial election due next February.
There were reports on BBC last night that thousands of people of the ethnic minorities in Myanmar have fled into China and Bangladesh in response to what some are calling ethnic cleansing by the country’s army.
Admittedly, Aung San Suu Kyi needs the cooperation of the military leaders in the country in order to lead. But she also needs to do more to stop these activities in the northern provinces. The irony of a Nobel Peace Prize winner passively allowing ethnic cleansing to go on is reaching a breaking point. Will the so called insurgencies erupt into civil war?
What are Myanmar’s neighbors going to do about this? What is the international community going to do about this?
Its easy for outsiders to tout human rights, confrontation and activism. Would they accept the consequences of that? How would they accept responsibility and accountability if the military decides they will reassert control and start another civil war? I think she is doing fine, in her own way, in her own time. Sitting in an aircon room with a comfortable salary far far away allows you to make judgements.