Chapter 1
Democracy, the demise of socialism
and Aung San amnesia

In the broadest sense, legitimacy of the Burmese State is bound up with the Buddha dhamma. Conceived of as impersonal, this has no boundaries and exists even without being represented by human beings. In a more narrow sense, however, legitimacy of the State centres upon persons with particular qualities and particular states of mind whose remains, when they die, exercise a powerful allure for inheritors of their ideas. In modern Burmese politics, legitimacy is crucially linked to human beings engaged in the national independence struggle, and in particular Aung San. It is through him that modern Burmese ideas of nation and nationhood have been translated.

Ever since his assassination together with his cabinet ministers-to-be on 19 July 1947, just prior to national independence, Aung San has been officially commemorated by the Burmese government as the spiritual father of the Burma army, and as the leader and architect of the independence struggle against British capitalism and against Japanese fascism.[1] The three main national holidays, celebrated continuously since 1948, all commemorate episodes in the unification of Burma by mean of Aung San's leadership: Union Day on 12 February is the day he rallied the diverse ethnic groups represented at Pinlon to join in support of the Union of Burma; Resistance Day on 27 March (today called Armed Forces Day) is the day he led the struggle against the Japanese; finally, Martyrs' Day on 19 July commemorates his assassination and that of his colleagues. His portrait resides in many homes and offices. Many places have been named in his memory, including the National Sports Stadium, the chief market in Rangoon, the National Park, and streets all over the country. Until recently, the Burmese currency invariably carried his portrait.

The high esteem in which Aung San has been held by the Burmese public has proved difficult for the military regimes who came to power in the 1962 military coup to handle. Though Ne Win made attempts to diminish Aung San's stature early on, in the end he decided that it would be more useful to construct his authority upon Aung San as spiritual father of the army.

Aung San's double role, on the one hand, as representative of the emergent indigenous government and, on the other, as representative of the protesting students against illegitimate foreign regimes, caused the SLORC regime inheriting power from Ne Win to rethink the way it positioned itself in relation to political heritage. During the March 1988 protests, a question mark arose over who actually perpetuated the political tradition of Aung San. Was it the military regime that had inherited the instruments and ranks of the army and were guided by Ne Win, or was it the students who opposed them and carried Aung San's portrait into the streets?

Leaving Oxford, England, Aung San Suu Kyi's accidental visit to Burma in March 1988 to nurse her mother, the very month when the protests began, prompted one observer to refer to her as ‘truly an accidental tourist politician’.[2] It drew her into the centre of the controversy over the army's manipulation of Aung San's imagery for its own legitimisation. Today, Aung San is claimed by the democratic movement his daughter came to lead. The regime's marginalisation of Aung San since 1989 must, in part at least, be read as the result of the success by the opposition in eroding the army's legitimacy by demonstrating ambiguities in Aung San's political heritage that were not in favour of the regime.

Aung San Suu Kyi and the Aung San factor

Aung San Suu Kyi's image in Burma cannot be understood without appreciating what is widely known as ‘the Aung San factor’. As one journalist defined it, the Aung San factor is that ‘most citizens can believe that Daw Suu Kyi can rightfully use her father's memory to call attention back to 1948 and to draw on political history and traditions that touch a collective and familiar chord in the hearts of all the people’.[3] He is also

(c) ILCAA 1999 - Gustaaf Houtman. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics. ILCAA Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia & Africa Monograph Series 33, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1999, ISBN 4-87297-748-3, p 015/392

commonly referred to as ‘the Burmese equivalent of George Washington’.[4] The Aung San factor reaches deep into the core of the regime itself, as even the soldiers placed to guard Aung San Suu Kyi had to be frequently changed in case their loyalty to the military would be overcome by the presence of Aung San Suu Kyi, as Victor's interviews her former guards also indicates.[5]

Aung San is Aung San Suu Kyi's father, and she refers to herself as ‘my father's daughter’.[6] He is her main inspiration, and her main political asset. She was born a little over two years prior to Aung San's assassination. Burmese often refer to the striking resemblance she bears to him. Though her photographs were briefly available for sale between 1989–90, they are now banned by the military. Nevertheless, the army's own elevation of Aung San as hero means that they cannot avoid her appearance as a child in the greatly popular Aung San family photographs.[7] She recognizes her popularity as derived from her status as daughter for she said that ‘I serve as a kind of unifying force because of my father's name’, but also because she perpetuates her father's reputation for selfless and uncorrupted dedication to the cause of the Burmese people. She says, ‘I am not interested in jostling for any kind of position’.[8]

Aung San was the initial reason for her entry into politics, for, as she says ‘when I first decided to take part in the movement for democracy, it was more out of a sense of duty than anything else. On the other hand, my sense of duty was very closely linked to my love for my father. I could not separate it from the love for my country, and therefore, from the sense of responsibility towards my people’ [E19]. ‘I'm doing this for my father … My only concern is that I prove worthy of him’ [ZH8]. Also, she says that ‘I felt that I always had his spiritual support’.[9]

After the war Aung San was, in British eyes, a new and young element in Burma's politics which they did not like at all. They were used to the old guard of politicians such as Ba Maw, who played ball with the colonial authorities. After the war they preferred to deal with them rather than with Aung San. This situation is replicated here, for the regime initially saw Aung San Suu Kyi as a young upstart of little significance. Later they saw her as an irritation and as the main focus for opposition to their government. Unlike the British government, who eventually came round to negotiating with Aung San, the regime has still to see her as a legitimate opponent with whom one negotiates. Targeted by ultra-conservative members of the military, she runs the same risks of assassination as her father.

To Aung San Suu Kyi, Aung San's struggle represents clean politics for she says, ‘when I honour my father I honour all those who stand for political integrity in Burma’ [ZH9]. His memory was, in her words, ‘the guardian of their [the people's] political conscience’.[10] She did not initially aspire to be involved in politics and said herself that her intention when she arrived in Rangoon in March 1988 was ‘to start several libraries in my father's memory’.[11]

Her entry into Burmese politics began with her first major speech at the Shwedagon to the Burmese public, in which she quoted her father's support for the fight for democracy and freedom [ZH11] and also his views on the organization and correct behaviour of the army, who should uphold the highest values and not impede democratic reform [ZH12]. Indeed, repetition of history, namely the renewal today of the repressive environment her father fought against, motivated her to characterise her contemporary struggle as ‘the second national independence struggle’ [ZH10]. It should be noted that this first speech took place at the very same pagoda, namely the Shwedagon, near to which the remains of her father was interred, and where he had made some of his earliest, most inflammatory speeches against the British.

When Aung San's wife, Daw Khin Kyi, died on 2 January 1989 at the age of 75, this meant a State funeral in memory of her not only as wife of Aung San, but also as mother of Aung San Suu Kyi. By this time, the army already felt Aung San Suu Kyi had betrayed them. It was an orderly and disciplined event

attended by about 100,000 people during which Aung San Suu Kyi clearly was the focus. At this point it became apparent that Aung San could no longer be the unambiguous spiritual leader of the regime, for his daughter had become too influential and had begun to claim back her father's political heritage. She was now free from her duties nursing her mother and could dedicate herself to the democracy struggle.

Her own commemoration of her father provided the regime with its reasons for placing her under house arrest in at least two respects. First, she proclaimed that the close connection Ne Win proclaimed to have with Aung San was, in the opinion of her father, a negative connection; she argued that Aung San distrusted Ne Win, that Ne Win was not inheritor of the army, and that he was an improper leader for the country who was chiefly responsible for the country's state of deterioration. Without mentioning Ne Win by name, Aung San Suu Kyi had already criticised him as early as 8 August 1988, prior to the Saw Maung period: ‘It is the belief of the majority of the people of Burma that the army is being manipulated and misused by a handful of corrupt fanatics whose powers and privileges are dependent on the survival of the present system.’[12] However, Ne Win's smiling appearance at the dinner for Armed Forces Day caused Aung San Suu Kyi to openly criticise him as responsible for the problems in Burma, and in a press conference on 26 June 1989 she charged that ‘General Ne Win, [who is] still widely believed to control Burma behind the scenes, was responsible for alienating the army from the people, fashioning the military into a body responsive solely to him …’. Also, ‘the opinion of all our people’ was that ‘U Ne Win is still creating all the problems in this country’.[13] In another June speech she said that U Ne Win ‘caused this nation to suffer for twenty six years’, and that he ‘lowered the prestige of the armed forces’.[14] In interviews on 1 and 8 July she said she thought Ne Win was behind SLORC's refusal to hold dialogue and that she did not think ‘there will be free and fair elections so long as U Ne Win is at the helm of power’.[15]

However, her chief criticism of Ne Win, widely interpreted as having resulted in her being placed under house arrest, was made on 13 July 1989 when Aung San Suu Kyi questioned whether the army was in line with the wishes of Bogyok Aung San or Ne Win, which according to Saw Maung ‘indicate(s) that there was personal hatred, prejudice, incitement to make people misunderstand the Tatmadaw’.[16]

Her fierce criticism of Ne Win's relation to Aung San was at least a contributory factor in the de-emphasis of Aung San by the military, in addition to the fact that she was Aung San's daughter claiming his heritage. Whether this break with her father on the part of the regime will in retrospect be seen as a good thing, is a question I cannot entertain at this point, except to say that a shared image of Aung San may help when the moment comes for reconciliation. Once under house arrest, she continued her criticism of Ne Win. In August she said the NLD had ‘enough of the shadow boxing – let us get at the real enemy’ and called him ‘a megalomaniac’ who does ‘anything to keep himself in power’.[17] October saw the publication of her statement about her father's dislike, distrust and demotion of Ne Win.[18] Much later, in 1997, however, she refused to unambiguously identify him for causing her to be under house arrest.[19]

Aung San was indirectly involved in her house arrest in a second way: it was imposed on 20 July 1989, the day after Martyrs' Day. On 19 July she was prevented from going out as Rangoon was awash with soldiers seeking to prevent any form of gathering. At that time she said that her party ‘had no intention of leading our people straight into a killing field’.[20] Nevertheless, the following day Aung San Suu Kyi insisted on

paying her respects at her father's tomb along with her numerous political followers, despite warnings from the regime that they would permit her to go only in her private capacity as a family member [ZH13].[21] Win Htein, her personal assistant put the reason for her house arrest:

July 19 was Martyrs' Day, in recognition of the 1947 assassination of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's father. Previously, that occasion was quite an open affair. The immediate families were invited and they attended the ceremony. Following that, the general public joined Martyrs' Day to pay homage by putting flowers onto the tombs of the leaders. But this year the SLORC restricted each family to only two persons. It was a provocation and we knew it. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi announced that she would attend the ceremony anyway with her own family as well as with NLD leaders. Because of that, she was detained the next day. I was also taken from this residence the same day.[22]

Aung San's memory sustained her during her house arrest. She describes how during that time she frequently looked at her father's picture hanging on a wall in her living room, and thought ‘Well now, it's just you and me – but we'll make it’.[23] Though the conditions of her house arrest were officially lifted six years later in July 1995, she has never been fully free to move around since then. Nevertheless, the regime was pleased when, upon her release and in a conciliatory gesture, she attended the official ceremony in commemoration of her father.

However, the thought that the image of the national martyr should have been appropriated by his daughter for the political opposition caused great consternation with the military regime. The regime's fear of her is nowhere more evident than in the vast number of official press reports, editorials, news items and speeches made by regime journalists in the official media to discredit her.

Aung San – first democracy, then socialism

If Aung San's role in the lineage of Burmese politics has a double-take, a dual inheritance that permits him to be claimed both, by members of the military regime and by the democracy movement, this is but a reflection of a degree of ambiguity in the political ideology ascribed to him. The speeches and writings attributed to him can be used to justify arguments on both sides. Nevertheless, as I will show, the military regime, as currently constituted, has a very weak claim to Aung San's heritage. That they know this today is evident in the way that they have soft-pedalled Aung San since 1989.

With one document excepted, namely ‘Blueprint for Burma’, Aung San has consistently presented, and is generally understood to have intended, Burma's political development to follow the order of: national independence – unity – democracy – socialism.

Blueprint for Burma [24]

‘Blueprint for Burma’ represents the army's best argument for claiming Aung San's heritage. This was the early plan attributed to Aung San at the age of twenty-six sometime in January and February 1941, while he was being trained in Japan by the Japanese army, and while jointly planning the invasion of Burma.

Blueprint does not contain references to socialism, and so is not denigrating of it. However, it is uncomplimentary, to say the least, about democracy, as it advocates a ‘strong state administration as exemplified in Germany and Italy [in the 1930s]’, the pursuit of a ‘eugenic policy’, setting up of ‘racial units’, and dividing our people into ‘backward’ and ‘administered’ sections, where ‘all the backward people must be raised to one level’. It argues that ‘there shall be only one nation, one party, one leader’, and ‘no parliamentary opposition, no nonsense of individualism. Everyone must submit to the State which is supreme over the individual’. Burma's economy was to rely on Japan based on ‘exchange of mutual goods such as Japanese manufactured goods for our raw materials and rice’, and ‘Japanese investment in Burma, preferential treatment for Japanese goods, joining the yen block will be part of our new economic life’.

The army has often cited this document to show the relevance of their actions. One can understand why, when we read that it says ‘all questions of the state … in fact, all such questions revolve around the

central necessity for national defence’. It is dependent on Japan, for ‘we shall have to build a powerful Army, Navy and Air Forces, and here the help of Japan is imperative’. Here also ‘in administrative as well as judicial and financial matters, the rule of authority more than the rule of law should prevail’.

However, for such a supposedly crucial document, it is peculiar, to say the least, that Blueprint was published not until March 1947 in The Guardian, more than six years after it was supposedly conceived and almost one-and-a-half years after the Japanese had left, when the views it expresses were no longer fashionable. Certainly, Aung San had revised his views by 1946, when he said that Asian concepts of unity ‘must not be like the Co-prosperity Sphere of militarist Japan’.[25]

Nevertheless, we can surmise from the fact that Aung San does not seem to have denied its contents in the three months between its publication and his death that it is likely to have been, though painful for him later, probably a document which he did indeed write.[26] The purpose of writing the document, however, was most likely intended by him only for consumption within the Japanese army and was severely edited by the military officers in charge of Aung San, in whose possession the document was found. It was not originally written for consumption in Burma, as otherwise it would have been published before. Furthermore, it was written while Aung San had literally been kidnapped by the Japanese army. It was, more likely than not, an attempt to fit Burma into overall Japanese discourse, so that Japan might be swayed to act and expel the British; it was not, in my view, an ideological statement of Aung San's views.

It is also more than likely that its publication was initiated by Aung San's political rivals to detract from his reputation as the political leader to inherit Burma's national independence. The date falls between a number of significant moments in Burma's political history. It occurred six months before the elections and in the month prior to its publication Aung San had negotiated the Pinlon Agreement. Also, a few months before, U Saw had been wounded by an attacker, which he presupposed to be Aung San's doing. Its publication was likely, therefore, an attempt to discredit and embarrass Aung San.

There are many pointers that suggest that the contents of this document, which was found in possession of one of Aung San's Japanese superior officers, had not been under Aung San's personal control. The fact that this document glorifies Japan (including proclaiming the lineage of the emperor unbroken as opposed to the ‘inferior’ broken lineages of Burmese kings) is out of character with Aung San's other writings. Furthermore, Aung San himself did not include this document in his collected speeches, suggesting that he himself disowned it as irrelevant to his views on Burma.

Aung San's democracy

Prior to the war, the revolutionary students and many other Burmese were sceptical of democracy. After all, it was a democratic country, Britain, that had occupied their country. In this way, in the 1930s and early 1940s, democracy was greatly disliked by most of those who were later to become Burma's leaders. Indeed, the heroes of the students at the time were Mussolini, Hitler, and the Irish revolutionary leaders, while Japan was looked upon as a friendly fellow Asian country that was potentially a liberator of Burma. U Nu, widely regarded as an exponent of democracy, in his 1935 inaugural speech at the Student Union stated ‘I dislike democracy, where much time is wasted in persuading the majority and in trying to get the consent of the majority. Democracy is good in name only … It cannot work in the period of dictatorship of Hitler and Mussolini.’[27] In 1936, U Thant, later Secretary-General of the UN, said that ‘democracy is lovelier at a distance. Seen at close quarters, it is nothing to sing hymns about.’[28]

However, the Japanese occupation of Burma radically changed the opinion all Burmese nationalists had of democracy, for ‘the resistance against the Japanese militarism was proclaimed in the name of democracy’, and ‘the freedom of Burma was demanded in the name of democracy and the rule of law in the family of nations’.[29] Originally the Japanese offer to help found an army marked the creation of a viable instrument to

fight off colonial yoke and attain national independence, but already before the invasion began in December 1941 many Burmese nationalists were disillusioned, and this was compounded in the course of the occupation by what Burmese deemed offensive behaviour by Japanese army personnel.[30] As this resistance against the Japanese built up it was eventually translated in the founding of the Anti-Fascist Organisation (AFO) in August 1944. This changed the opinion these young nationalists had of democracy, and resulted in widespread support for it.

After the return of the British, all parties – even the communists – agreed that democracy was the political system Burma would aim for. At the AFPFL Party Manifesto on 25 May 1945 a democratic constitution was envisaged for the government of independent Burma.[31] Socialist democracy would protect the poor through nationalisation of the important means of production. Full socialism, however, was to wait until after democracy was implemented, for ‘however anxious we may be to set up socialism in our country, her present economic position is such that socialization at the present stage is by no means possible’. In short, Aung San set forth his view that, after national independence was attained, democracy should precede true socialism.[32]

From the mid-1940s, though he retained a hand in the Peoples Volunteer Organization, which was seen by the British as a threat because it had the attributes of a military organization,[33] Aung San was preoccupied with Burma's national independence at that time as primarily a civilian political rather than a military problem. He left the army and refused offers from the British for a senior army role. Indeed, in early 1947 he was talking even of retiring from politics altogether after the transfer of power.[34]

In the absence of an external enemy, once the struggle against colonialism had attained its political momentum, he saw the role of the army as being in the barracks. Aung San, since he founded the army himself and had some control over it, did not see countries or armies as the primary danger, but rather political systems such as fascism and capitalism, which had produced the occupation of Burma by the Japanese and the British respectively. His speeches were directed at addressing these evils in order to safeguard local representation in government. This, he realised, could only be guaranteed by democracy that would permit local representation, as against government forcibly imposed by overseas countries.

Aung San launched the concept of ‘new democracy’ [dImiukersIAqs\] on 25 August 1946 in his speech to the AFPFL ‘It is clear that Aung San cannot win’ [biul\K¥op\ eAac\Sn\:kmeAac\Niuc\lui>AtiAlc\:Pæc\.K¥ôpI].[35] In this very section, he also unambiguously says that ‘socialism can only be attained after democracy’ [dImiukersIôpI:mH SiurHy\ls\zc\: òPs\Niuc\ty\]. In a speech nine months later he described ‘new democracy’ as ‘although not entirely free of capitalism, is not capitalistic’, is ‘somewhere betwixt and between’, is based on ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ and where ‘the greatest number wields the greatest power’. If the old democracies had succumbed to underhand manipulation by ‘capitalists and big business discreetly assuming power’ the constitution of this ‘new democracy’ would ‘place power in the hands of the masses through their elected representative from top to bottom’ so that, ‘if they have no confidence in their representative they must have the power to recall them’.[36]

On 23 May 1947, less than three months before his death, Aung San gave a speech which made his thoughts on democracy very clear. He distinguished ‘true’ [dImiukersIAss\] from ‘sham’ democracy [dImiukersIAtu]

Only when the ‘State’ is there by the people's consent, only when the ‘State’ identifies itself with the people's interest in theory as well as practice can there be true democracy. Any other kind of democracy is sham. Only true democracy can work for the real good of the people, real equality of status and opportunity for every one irrespective of class or race or religion or sex. Not every democracy is true democracy. Some are imperfect democracies concealing in democratic guise the dictatorship of the capitalist class. True democracy alone must be our basis if we want to draw up our constitution with the people as the real sovereign and the people's interest as the primary consideration. Democracy alone is the basis upon which the real progress of a nation can be built. There may be such other ideologies as Socialism and Communism, but they sprout from the same parent

stem of true democracy. They are only seeking its wider connotation. They are not satisfied with democracy in its political denotation. They seek to extend it over the economic sphere’.[37]

‘Sham democracy’, according to Aung San, is produced when power is retained against the wishes of the people.

Power is a coveted and valuable thing. Once grasped it is not readily relinquished. We have seen possessing classes contending among themselves for power. The people never come into it. The people come only when they can be used as a lever, ‘in the name of the people’. The words ‘people’ and ‘democracy’ and so on are used freely, but not sincerely. They are only catchwords to hoodwink the people into placing power in the hands of those who are supposed to use that power in the interest of the people, but who eventually use it in the interests of the ruling classes against the interest of the people.[38]

With these concepts of ‘true’ and ‘sham’ democracy, Aung San aimed for local representation in government and managed to broker a degree of unity between the various political factions and to a limited degree with the ethnic minorities as reflected in the Pinlon Agreement. He proceeded to argue when he expelled the Communists that democracy was the third way in Burma's political path, between two extremes, communism and capitalism or fascism. This kind of politics, he said, is like the Buddha's Middle Way. There was no room here for a military government.

However, his assassination on 19 July 1947, meant that he could take democracy no further in terms of concrete implementation, as he did not live long enough to experience national independence.[39] His assassins were linked to U Saw who had attempted to sway the British to support his leadership at National Independence. In 1997, at the fifty year commemoration of the assassination, it was revealed that U Saw was merely a pawn in a plot attributed ultimately to British intelligence. The revelation was based on evidence supplied, in particular, by an interview with U Kyaw Zaw, Aung San's closest friend during their training in Japan, who lives in exile in China.

That Aung San himself, as Martyr of the country and founder of the army, was unable to personally engage himself as a civilian in implementing democracy meant that the latter was immediately disadvantaged. Had he been part of the process, as founder and leader of the army who had chosen civilian life by preference, Burma's history might have taken a very different course.

Ne Win and ‘lightning rod democracy’

Critics of democracy have argued, pointing at the Blueprint, that really Aung San did not believe in democracy. They point at what they see as an anti-democratic disposition on the part of Aung San and other political leaders prior to National Independence. Also, critics have pointed out that the concept of democracy is not actually used in the 1947 constitution.[40]

Nevertheless, against this stands the fact that most nationalists changed their view of democracy around the time of the foundation of the Anti-Fascist Organisation in August 1944. At that time Aung San began to regard democracy as a vital element in Burma's self-governance, a view that persisted right up until his death. To Aung San, democracy was a system that would make impossible for a government to be in power that totally disregarded local representation, as had Japanese fascism and British colonialism. In this sense, democracy was having unanimous appeal right across all political factions in Burma. Furthermore, as regards the Constitution making no mention of democracy, Britain does not have a constitution, yet is still a democracy by all accounts.

Aung San was appointed the first General (Bogyok) in the Burmese army, and Ne Win the second. In the publications Is trust vindicated? Ne Win has himself depicted alongside Aung San with the caption ‘After the General [Aung San], the General [Ne Win]’. Both received their military training in Japan. Ne Win's biographer wrote that as Bogyok Aung San had ‘fallen on the march – as a good soldier would’, so that ‘only Bogyok Ne Win remained’.[41] Ne Win is portrayed as preordained to fill in for the vacancy left by Aung San. Ne Win is widely regarded as an anti-democrat for obvious reasons, for he performed the 1962 coup against U Nu's elected government and suspended parliamentary democracy. The paradox, however, is that because he had inherited democracy from Aung San and supposedly walked in his footsteps, Ne Win never eliminated democracy from view entirely. Indeed, democracy was, in my view, a vital element in his political path with a meaning that shifted in the course of his career.

Just prior to taking charge of the caretaker government, Ne Win and his officers still declared themselves committed to the national ideology of ‘freedom, democracy, and socialism’, in that order, as formulated in the Meiktila Defence Services Conference of 21 October 1958. In this, their role was to ‘restore peace and the rule of law, to implant democracy, to establish a socialist economy’.[42]

If these aims were along Aung San's originally specified order, and were adhered to when power was returned to the elected U Nu government in 1960, Ne Win, after his 1962 coup attempted to implement a socialist system directly, by-passing democracy. As Kyaw Zaw said in his interview, after 1962 Ne Win and his group ‘passed over the second stage – democracy, and to suppress democracy they started to shout “Socialism”. The Socialism which Bogyoke [Aung San] advocated was the genuine one in which the country becomes rich, peaceful, united and developed, and not that like Ne Win's “socialism”, which dropped our country to the LDC (Least Developed Country).’[43]

However, this did not mean that democracy was eliminated from the political path or, indeed, that it was rendered politically meaningless thereby as an ideal; it merely signified Ne Win had indefinitely postponed its realisation. Writing of the Ne Win regime in 1966, Trager views Ne Win as having placed it at the end of the political path. He conveys Ne Win's views as being that ‘we can help the Burmese to have what they say they now want – unity, order, socialism, and democracy’.[44] Just as in the protests of the late 80s and the promise to hold elections, democracy still had much value to military politics, but it was reduced to a mere promise, a utopian ideal that they were unprepared to give a chance unless their hand was forced. At the time of Ne Win's resignation such a situation arose, and he then finally advocated multi-party elections.

In the English version of his biography, Maung Maung, Ne Win's biographer, justifies Ne Win's coup by denying the ability of democracy as understood by U Nu to work. In a speech he gave to the Revolutionary Council on 30 April 1962 he declared the Revolutionary Council to be ‘deeply disillusioned with parliamentary democracy’, which had been ‘tried and tested in furtherance of the aims of socialist development’ but has not only ‘failed to serve our socialist development but also, due to its very defects, weaknesses and loopholes, its abuses and the absence of a mature public opinion, lost sight of and deviated from the socialist aims, until at last indications of its heading imperceptibly towards just the reverse have become apparent.’[45] However, this by no means resulted in Ne Win throwing democracy out altogether from the political path, for even then the Revolutionary Council also stated that the new political path must develop ‘in conformity with existing conditions and environment and the ever changing circumstances only such a form of democracy as will promote and safeguard the socialist development’.[46]

Maung Maung then went on to cite Aung San's very unrepresentative ‘Blueprint for Burma’ as proof that Aung San also thought the military should have a central role in Burmese society, forgetting that there is no evidence that Aung San ever personally endorsed Blueprint as the political path for Burma. Aware that he had only one document by means of which he could justify military government, Maung Maung excused the omission of socialism in this document saying that Aung San ‘did not use the word “socialism”, for he was in Japan, among military leaders who had no great fondness for the word’.[47]

After 1962, the army positioned itself at the heart of socialism. Socialism, in turn, came to be used as an excuse for army business ventures. In Ne Win's concept, as expressed in The Burmese Way to Socialism, the army has a special role as it ‘will also be developed to become national armed forces which will defend our socialist economy’. This peculiar use of an army, in the absence of external enemies, to ‘defend our socialist economy’ suggests that the centralisation of the economy in the Burmese Way to Socialism was no more but an instrument for the army to attain control of the State. It was, so to speak, Japanese militarism as inherent in the Blueprint rather than Aung San's concept of socialism that Burma inherited in this way.

Such weak justification for constructing the socialist path on the basis of military strength was to play puzzle with Aung San's words and was to stretch the limits of credulity. Nevertheless, in the first ideological statement The Burmese Way to Socialism it was again affirmed that what the military was doing was merely to

take further Aung San's original plan, for ‘we, the peoples of the Union of Burma, shall nurture and hug a new patriotism as inspired by the words of General Aung San’.[48]

Ne Win, in pretending to follow Aung San, had not only jumped to socialism in Aung San's political development path, but he still kept up the pretence of developing towards a democracy. He knew that his version of socialism was unpopular and that people might tolerate it only if he kept to Aung San's heritage, and only if he promised attainment of democracy eventually. And promising democracy is what he did.

Aung San's insistence on democracy, and Ne Win's declaration that he would adhere to Aung San's words, means that the democratic ideal has been undeniable and inescapable even in Ne Win's army-centred politics. On the anniversary in 1966 of the coup on 2 March, celebrated as Peasants Day, General Ne Win himself promised that ‘true democracy’ would emerge and that power would be transferred to the people.[49] In 1967 serious food shortages occurred, accompanied by civil unrest. In the following year, Ne Win emphasized in his Burmese speech that ‘I will make democracy flourish’ [dImiukersIkiu Tæn\:ka:eAac\ lup\my\].[50] Ne Win formed the Internal Unity Advisory Body of thirty-three civilians to report to him by 31 May 1969 with recommendations for future structure of government. Nevertheless, nothing was done with these recommendations and no substantive arrangements were made to implement democratic reforms.

Cynics would say that these were all mere gestures Ne Win made towards his plan to broaden membership of the elitist cadre of the Revolutionary Council, and in developing the BSPP to become a mass movement. By the time the BSPP held its first congress from 28 June to 11 July 1971, it brought together 1,200 delegates and was looking forward to increase its membership country-wide. However, when on 23 July 1988 Ne Win finally gave his resignation speech at the emergency BSSP congress, he admitted his socialist experiment had failed, and said ‘since it is our belief that the answer to the question – a multi-party or a single-party system – can be provided by a referendum, the current congress is requested to approve a national referendum … if the choice is for a multiparty system, we must hold elections for a new parliament.’[51] In this speech it was clear that Ne Win did finally admit the failure of socialism, as in the same session it was proposed that the country would open up to foreign investment and foreign businesses, spelling the end of BSPP socialism.

This persistent reference to democracy as an ultimate goal of the Ne Win regime indicates that Ne Win knew that his version of army socialism did not gel with the political ideas prevalent at the time of national independence, in particular with the plans for Burma after the Japanese occupation by Aung San and the other nationalists. Furthermore, they indicate that, in order for people to tolerate his version of socialism, he knew that he periodically had to hold out the promise of democracy while reorganising his power base just to keep up people's hopes while he was vulnerable. Finally, the 1988 reference clearly indicates Ne Win's own admission that army socialism – the way he conceived it – had failed as spectacularly, if not more so, as U Nu's democratic government at the time of his coup.

Democracy under U Nu had only fifteen years not to work, but by 1989 Ne Win's socialism had been suffered for twenty-seven years, and people were considerably worse off than when he took power. The view that Ne Win used democracy as a carrot all the way through the period of military socialism is confirmed when one looks at the BSPP's The Burmese Way to Socialism. Here it is quite clearly stated that democracy cannot be faulted as a political system at all for, as an antidote to feudalism, ‘parliamentary democracy … happens to be the best in comparison with all its preceding systems’. The military could only justify the immediate implementation of socialism by saying that they were promising an even better system than the parliamentary democracy system that had so far failed as implemented in Burma.

parliamentary democracy has been tried and tested in furtherance of the aims of socialist development. But Burma's ‘parliamentary democracy’ has not only failed to serve our socialist development but also, due to its very defects, weaknesses and loopholes, its abuses and the absence of a mature public opinion, lost sight of and deviated from the socialist aims, until at last indications of its heading imperceptibly towards just the reverse have become apparent.[52]

It concludes that ‘the nation's socialist aims cannot be achieved with any assurance by means of the form of parliamentary democracy that we have so far experienced’ and that ‘it must develop in conformity

with existing conditions and environment and ever changing circumstances, only such a form of democracy as will promote and safeguard the socialist development’. This is what it calls a ‘socialist democratic state’. However, we soon realise from The Constitution of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (2 July 1962) that the BSPP as the national party was to operate ‘on the principle of democratic centralism’, by which was really meant ‘intra-party democracy’. Its aim was to change society by attempting to ‘first reorientate all erroneous views of our people’. The main point of justifying socialism was that Burma was a special case requiring a special and uniquely Burmese approach.

For the above reasons, we can safely conclude that Ne Win's vision of democracy represented by no means an elimination of democracy from view. Instead, it was but a transposition of the place of democracy in Aung San's political path, in which priority was placed upon socialism. Ne Win's covert aim with the introduction of socialism, as in many military governments, was to centralise the economy so that the military could exercise and maintain complete control. The democracy element has nevertheless remained a perpetually present element in Burmese political ideology, which the army has seen fit to place into the indeterminate future, carted out only when the army's grip on the country proves to be insufficiently strong and when they felt vulnerable. Promises of democracy are thus characteristically made, but never seriously implemented.

Democracy was thus but a lightning rod to the regime, that served to placate its detractors when it suited them. Since 1962, despite continuous assertions to the contrary, the military have remained disinterested in taking positive steps towards the implementation of democracy. Since 1988 the army proclaim similar qualifications to the BSPP that are threatening, once again, to infinitely delay democratic reform, thus depriving it from its rightful place in modern Burmese politics.

NLD democracy

The March 1988 protests initially started as a small ‘teashop brawl’, but was soon transformed into a major protest movement rising up against the greatly unpopular military junta. As Nemoto[53] points out, it was later, in particular during the 8.8.88 uprising, that the mood changed from an ‘anti-Ne Win’ to a positive ‘pro-democracy’ stance. This protest goes under the generally accepted (including SLORC-SPDC) term as ‘the 88 affair’ [88 Aer: AKc\:]. Some who refer in particular to the students who were at the core of it, refer to it as ‘the 88 student affair’ [88 ek¥ac\:qa: Aer: AKc\:]. The NLD, when drawing attention to the arising of pro-democracy support, refers to it as ‘the democracy uprising’ [dImiukersIAr:eta\puM].

Lintner points out that Ne Win himself had given the most significant impetus to the democracy demands after his famous resignation speech on 23 July 1988, in which he held up the prospect of multi-party elections.[54] Nevertheless, demands for democracy were intrinsic to the protests already very early on. Already in the student protests as early as 14 March there were demands for democracy.[55] Certainly the concept of democracy was reflected in the names and policies of the 220 parties which emerged and registered in Burma [Y4].

SPDC disciplined democracy

The SLORC regime, aware of this pervasive idea of democracy throughout post-independence history, had a most interesting reaction to press reports that criticised it of impeding implementation of democracy. It showed itself aggrieved that it was seen as ‘undemocratic’, and asserted the astonishing claim, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Burma has been a democratic country unbroken from the time of national independence.

Some persons of Daw Suu Kyi's NLD are resorting to various means to create misleading impressions on the Government by implying that it is a government that does not desire democracy and that suppresses people desiring democracy. We are informed of their spread of news and propaganda campaigns through media services of the West bloc, which are biased, and their writing letters to other nations in the hope of winning reliance. What is actually needed is to understand the stand of the State Law and Order Restoration Council. It is a government taking responsibility for transitional period. Its main duty is peaceful transition. The allegation that those desiring democracy are being suppressed is meant to attract attention and obtain help from powerful democracies.

It is a false and frivolous allegation. The State Law and Order Restoration Council is a government bringing a democracy into being. It is a government establishing a multiparty democracy system for peaceful transition. Every person in Myanmar desires democracy. The reason is that Myanmar has never been depleted of democracy. In the AFPFL era, there was

parliamentary democracy. In the Lanzin Party [BSPP] era, there was socialist democracy. Democracy had flourished under the respective programme. Currently, the State Law and Order Restoration Council Government is seeing to a political transition directed toward multiparty democracy. The Government, responsible for this period, will proceed within the bounds of laws, rules and regulations.

Deterrent action will be taken against any person or organisation not adhering to rules and laws promulgated by the Government and for any act to oppose and deter projects and objectives of the Government. It is meaningless to shout at the top of their voice that those desiring democracy are being suppressed. Stability of the State and rule of law are of primary importance today. The Government must curb and prevent any act to jeopardise objectives of the nation. Therefore, what the NLD planned to do from 27 to 29 September had to be curbed.[56]

Given the continuities from Ne Win politics, SLORC may be forgiven for thinking that it had inherited ‘democracy’ from the Ne Win regime, and that it had to defend these concepts from unruly parties such as the NLD who, elected by a majority vote, were threatening to upset this form of, for want of a better term, ‘perpetually postponed’ or ‘lightning rod democracy’.

Today, the SPDC concept of ‘discipline-flourishing democracy’ is characterised as accompanied by (1) ‘rights to freedom exercised within framework of law’, (2) ‘compatible with political, economic and social structures of State’, (3) ‘in line with historical traditions, customs and culture of nationality’, and it is (4) ‘especially democracy that brings benefits fairly for all nationals within the framework of national solidarity’.[57]

Aung San Suu Kyi is reported to have told a foreign-based Burmese broadcast station, ‘we are very afraid of what “the Burmese Way” means when Ohn Gyaw speaks of the “Burmese way to Democracy”. We faced the Burmese Way to Socialism for 26 years under Gen Ne Win's regime. We don't expect democracy through the military's way.’[58] U Kyi Maung, alluding to Saw Maung's reference to ‘guided or limited democracy’ along the lines of the Indonesian system, wittily characterised it as ‘the military's misguided democracy’.[59]

Democracy as intrinsic to Burmese politics

Of course, Silverstein is right when he says that ‘the irony of Burmese politics is that, however they have been organised, all leaders have championed democratic rule, even those who seized power illegally and destroyed it’. Even the post-1962 military ‘feels obligated to pay lip-service to it’.[60] Since the collapse of socialist and communist states in Eastern Europe, SLORC and later the SPDC, have decided that socialism is no longer a viable goal, and have instead decided to emphasize democracy, but by reserving the central role for the army, it would not appear to be substantially different from its earlier concepts of ‘central’ and ‘intra-party democracy’ except for the apparent abandonment of socialist ideology.

So the question that arises is, if socialism – or, ‘socialist democracy’ based on army-orchestrated ‘central’, ‘guided’ or ‘intra-party democracy’ – has failed, how will a new concept of army-orchestrated democracy possibly fare? As Nawrahta, one of the regime's journalists put it, ‘Myanmar is now in a transitional period from an old era to a new era … A socialist era has definitely passed by now. To say that the new era is a democratic era, the fact is we are not yet in a democratic era.’ The State, he says, has only just begun to ‘shape the new age’.[61]

In placing her father's quest for democracy up-front, Aung San Suu Kyi is not asking for radical change at all, for evidently democracy was the initial plan laid out at the time of national independence under Aung San, whose political philosophy the army have proclaimed to espouse since national independence. And it was Aung San's political philosophy that was subscribed to by the Ne Win regime since the 1962 coup, included as a concept in the Burmese Way to Socialism and promised by Ne Win upon his retirement in 1988. Democracy was then defended by SLORC to the extent of holding the elections and permitting the NLD win, and it is now finally promised by the SPDC.

In this context, given the agreement of all parties, it is difficult to argue the case that democracy is not suitable for Burma by virtue of some variety of ‘Burmese’ or ‘Asian values’. What is evidently controversial, from the point of view of the SPDC today, is not NLD demands for democracy, but NLD's view that the

army should not a priori have the central role it has appropriated for itself, as it has in all forms of ‘democratic’ government since the 1962 Ne Win coup. Aung San Suu Kyi has used Aung San's concept of ‘sham democracy’ for the forms of democracy proposed by the SLORC and the SPDC [Y42] because of the army's insistence to have the lion share of representation in the new constitution.

Aung San amnesia

The popular view since independence had always been that General Aung San was ‘the father of the army’. After the coup, to this was added was that, if Aung San was its father, then General Ne Win ‘developed the army to maturity’.[62] The current regime continues to describe Aung San as its father, and as the father of national independence, but this has become a hollow cliché as Aung San was no longer given the respect he had been given by previous regimes.[63]

Ne Win's experiment with socialism lost its appeal after it failed in Burma, and its breakdown in Eastern Europe and the USSR. The army now cannot use the excuse of a ‘socialist’ centrally planned economy to justify its power base. Subtract from Aung San's political path socialism, and you only have national independence, national unity and democracy left. The failure of socialism meant that the democracy segment of Aung San's political path came into full view once again. The regime, if it wanted to avoid the socialism with which Ne Win had equated Aung San, also had to avoid him for fear of democracy. It had to backtrack to square zero to totally reinvent new political ideology through which it might justify a central political role for the army.

To justify itself as rightful heir of the Burmese political lineage the regime desperately needed to tone down Aung San's profile in Burmese politics. In short, there was little alternative but to practise Aung San amnesia. To my knowledge, until 1987 virtually all notes carried the Aung San imprint. Aung San amnesia already began under Ne Win, for under his Chairmanship in 1987 demonetization and the introduction of the 45 Kyat and 90 Kyat notes began the process of Aung San amnesia. The 45 Kyat note carried the face of Thahkin Hpo Hla, the leader of the 1932 oil strike, and the 90 Kyat note carried the face of Saya San. New notes printed subsequent to 1988 replaced these personalities with the lion as the principal icon. The most recent 500 Kyat note introduces the war hero Maha Bandoola who so valiantly fought the British in the First Anglo-Burmese War. New currency notes printed since 1988, with one exception, therefore, no longer bear Aung San's image.

After the 1989 Martyrs' Day anniversary incident, that resulted in the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi and the imprisonment of NLD leaders, Martyrs' Day became a low profile national event, no longer attended by the Prime Minister and the majority cabinet ministers, and only attended by the information minister.[64] National Independence Day speeches are normally replete with references to Aung San's selfless dedication for the good of the country. For example, State Peace and Development Council Chairman Senior General Than Shwe's message on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee Independence Day 1998 made no reference to Aung San, and instead stressed efforts of the many ‘national cultures of Myanmar’, and also put the struggle for national independence back into the Konbaung era.[65] From 1989 onwards the talks that teaching staff at Rangoon University used to give on Aung San in schools in the days leading up to Martyrs' Day ceased. Editorials on Aung San used to appear every two weeks or so, and quotes were placed in virtually every newspaper taken from Aung San's speeches – these too were discontinued.[66] It is difficult not to conclude, as one author points out, that the regime have been ‘trying to tarnish the image of Gen. Aung San’.

The junta always complains very loudly that General Aung San was assassinated by a British government conspiracy. However, from the time of the BSPP to the ruling military junta, no top military leader has paid respect to Martyrs' Day on July, 19, when Gen Aung San and other national leaders were assassinated. They are never interested in attending the Martyrs' Day ceremony. In the past, Burmese people anxiously awaited the sound of sirens, which would sound on Martyrs' Day at the time that Gen Aung San was assassinated. This allowed them to pay their respects to their national heroes, and they would observe one minute's silence. Under the junta there are no more sirens as the national sign of sorrow. This clearly means that the junta has been trying to tarnish the image of Gen Aung San.[67]

Moreover, although the 1989 Armed Forces Day was still referred to as Resistance Day and celebrated Aung San's going out to war to liberate and unify the country,[68] later these too lost their references to Aung San. The Aung San Museum in Nat Mauk, the restored house in which Aung San was born, and which was once the pride of the Ne Win government, has been virtually emptied of exhibits and left neglected.[69] The second Aung San Museum in Rangoon, first set up by Ne Win in 1963, is the large house at 25 Tower Leìn Street [tawålin\:lm\:], later renamed as ‘General Museum Street’ [biul\K¥op\ òptiuk\lm\:] in which Ne Win briefly lived until he gave it to Aung San, who lived there between May 1945 and July 1947. This is largely unadvertised and unknown, and when I visited it in August 1998 I was the only visitor. On top of the house is a dkði%qaKå Buddha shrine. Though principally a Buddha who ensures safety against fire, some of the people associated with the museum related to me that Aung San supposedly meditated there before going out to fight the Japanese.

Also, military leaders have increasingly expressed publicly criticisms of Aung San. General Saw Maung's last public speech on 27 March 1992 criticised Aung San for not resolving the ethnic minority question prior to national independence.[70]

This suggests that, when it comes to the issue of who assassinated Aung San, one has to wonder whether, in practising Aung San amnesia and in treating Aung San Suu Kyi as it has, it is not the regime that is re-assassinating Aung San, if not the man, than at least his image, his ideas on democracy and his role in bringing about national unity. The regime substituted Aung San with army and culture, as implied in the Myanmafication programme. In this, Japan plays, today once again, an important supportive role. There is an important question here as to whether Japan's role in discovering and training Aung San and his army in 1940, is not now being re-enacted at the cultural level, about more of which below. Furthermore, political controversy has been inflamed by abandoning Aung San's views on politics, in which he strongly argued against reserving a central role for either ‘culture’ or ‘religion’ in the sense of Buddhendom [budÎBaqa] (cf. Buddhism, budÎqaqna).[71]

Aung San reclaimed

The army lost its legitimacy when they cut themselves off from Aung San. As daughter of Aung San, and as principal leader of the democracy movement, Aung San Suu Kyi was their biggest threat. Aung San Suu Kyi's leadership strikes at the heart of the image they attempted to nurture of themselves as the leaders and custodians of the country. She inherited the image of her father, the image that the army had worked so hard to distil and purify. Her image was purified even further once she stood up erect for more than a decade against the entire machinery of State deployed to silence her. This prompted them to find new military heroes, such as Maha Bandoola, and impersonal symbols that had no children alive who might query their lies as Aung San Suu Kyi had done.

Though the first symptoms of Aung San amnesia began to set in during the final days of the Ne Win regime in 1987 – well before the democracy movement started its protests –this was greatly hastened by the democracy protests. Appropriation of Aung San as the icon of the opposition, in turn, seems to have served to further hasten his marginalisation by the regime. Those students most active in encouraging the protests saw Aung San as having been a student leader in his days and a rebellious young person fearlessly questioning authority and quite insubordinate to the illegitimate foreign invaders of Burma. This was reason enough for his portrait to be carried prominently in the protest marches by students even before Aung San Suu Kyi appeared on the political scene.[72] Indeed, one of the regime's journalists retrospectively called this ‘political defiance’ programme ‘Bogyok Aung San's Programme’.[73]

Of course, this does not mean that Aung San's legacy was actually erased from collective memory. For example, a collection of articles on Aung San recently came out edited by Ni Ni Myint, wife of General Ne Win, and leading figure of the Myanmar Historical Commission. Intellectuals in Burma interpret this volume as a reminder to this regime of the public's desire to see Aung San's views on democracy finally implemented.

If erasure of Aung San in Burmese collective consciousness is impossible, the very fact that it is being attempted is to awaken the desire to play Aung San's heritage up even more on the part of the protesters. In other words, the army's carefully orchestrated image of Aung San as the country's hero, and as the original architect for the country's path of socialist development right up until 1987, fell straight into the lap of the democracy movement who re-appropriated him and for whom Martyrs' Day has become a rallying cry for the democracy movement [ZH13].

It proved impossible to retain Aung San, for his daughter's manifestation became equated with him. In 1989, rumour spread that the design of the 1 Kyat note had been secretly altered by its designer, in which Aung San was redrawn to resemble Aung San Suu Kyi. Supposedly, the designer was a supporter of Aung San.[74] Upon discovery, the regime ordered printing of that particular note to stop, and Aung San ceased to be represented on currency notes from then on.

The denigration of Aung San Suu Kyi

Blaming her for their woes, since 1989 the regime has concentrated on destroying Aung San Suu Kyi's image. They attempted to delegitimize Aung San Suu Kyi as Aung San's daughter, and to assassinate her character as unpatriotic, having more in common with the British than with the Burmese. At the mundane and least serious level, this includes scrutinising her finances in detail to find evidence of ‘alien’ support from ‘enemies of the state’ and renaming her.

Frequent allusions are made to her by the regime's leaders and the regime's journalists avoiding her name – Aung San Suu Kyi – as a matter of policy.

According to Myanma customary law and Myanma Dhamma Rules, a bad and evil offspring shall not have the right to get inheritance from one's parents. The Bogadaw [wife of a European] has lost her right to inherit her father's name ‘Aung San’. According to English custom there is no reason to even call her Suu Kyi. She should be called Daw Michael Aris or Mrs. Michael Aris.

In what bad and evil manner did the Bogadaw [wife of European] behave to lose the right of inheriting her father's name? The most simple answer is that in the plot to assassinate her father, it was the Englishmen who pulled the strings from behind the scene and provided assistance and it is because Suu Kyi had married an Englishman and given birth to two sons … The fifth obligation of the children towards their parents is to safeguard own race. As for Suu Kyi, who is the daughter of no ordinary person but a National Leader, instead of preserving the race of her parents, the Myanmar race which the father greatly loves, she destroyed it by mixing blood with an Englishman.[75]

In press briefings ‘her jailers cannot bear to speak her name’ and would refer to her as ‘the factor’ or ‘the very specific problem’.[76] If her name is used, her father's name elements, Aung San, are frequently left off, except in some editorials where the purpose is to question her integrity as Aung San's daughter. Most popularly she is referred to as Mrs Aris (her husband's family name), but she has variously been referred to as puppet doll, puppet princess, puppet girl, axe handle, ‘The Veto Lady’, ‘Mrs Race Destructionist’ [ZO14], lady, ‘England returnee miss’, democracy princess, that person, that woman, or occasionally Suu Kyi or Ma Suu. Lately she has been referred to as ‘Mrs Suu Kyi Aris’,[77] but the regime's journalists are not beyond innovating by calling her ‘Mrs. Michael Aris’, a reference acceptable in American, but not in British English.[78]

One of the more interesting references is Bogadaw [biul\keta\]. This is intended to mean ‘wife of a European’.[79] In part, however, given the regime's association of Aung San Suu Kyi with the Anauk Medaw

[‘Mother of the West’] spirit,[80] this could also be interpreted as a word-play on spirit medium nat-gadaw.[81] Since Bo means both ‘European’ and ‘officer’, Burmese people readily jump to the interpretation that it is the officers' wives to whom this applies, who are joining their husbands in corruption, whereas on Aung San Suu Kyi they have tried to find evidence of corruption for years, but have been unable to unearth it.

This contrasts with the terminology of the opposition. In Burmese she is affectionately known as ‘Auntie Suu’ or Daw Suu [edÅsu], and by elderly generation with a claim to have known her as a child, she is known as Ma Suu [msu] (lit. ‘Elder Sister Suu’). However, speaking her name in public is dangerous in Burma as it immediately alerts military intelligence to the topic of conversation. In English, therefore, as eavesdropping on foreigners is inevitable, she is sometimes referred to as ‘The Lady’.[82]

Everybody here calls this place by the same name, not 54 University Drive. Certainly not Aung San Suu Kyi's home. The mere mention of her name's been enough to get people arrested. Instead they come to The Lady's House. We're going to The Lady's House, they say, or I'll meet you at The Lady's House.[83]

The regime's reason for avoiding Aung San as an element of her name is therefore very different from abbreviation of her name by the Burmese people in general. Just as the regime removed her house number to confuse visitors, though everyone knows very well where she is located,[84] so they also remove elements from her name to avoid people locating her in history alongside her father. The Burmese people keep the full name in their hearts, as they do her address, though they may pronounce it as a gesture of endearment or to avoid detection in abbreviated form. The regime, however, avoids reference to the Aung San element in her name so as not to link her to Aung San. Reference to the Aung San element is only included in contexts where her link with Aung San is ridiculed or where they have no choice but to use her full name in order to identify her without ambiguity to a foreign audience, for whom it would be difficult to comprehend their cryptic, alternative naming practices, and to whom these practices would anyhow be offensive. The issue of naming in Burmese society is an interesting one,[85] and it is possible to speculate that one of the reasons why Burma has such large intelligence services is because, without compulsory rules for representing parents names in children (there is no system of family names – all names are, in a sense, first names), and because of the ease with which people rename themselves, the authorities have great difficulty keeping track of Burmese citizens and their family relations.[86]

Reporting Aung San Suu Kyi

Alternative naming of Aung San Suu Kyi is evident in the reporting in the national press of the motorcade incident. A blockade had been placed around Aung San Suu Kyi's home on 27 September 1996

to prevent the NLD from holding the All Burma Congress of the National League for Democracy to celebrate the eighth anniversary of the founding of the party. In the wake of the 20 October 1996 student protests, the first major student protests since 1990, the regime began a crackdown, which included the arrest of U Kyi Maung under suspicion that he had spoken to the student leaders. Aung San Suu Kyi announced she would resume her weekend talks to the public outside the barricades on 2 November, and supporters of the regime harassed NLD sympathisers making their way to this venue. This presaged the attack which took place the following week on 9 November when NLD members were attacked on two separate occasions on the same day by groups of men identified as SLORC-paid United Solidarity Development Association (USDA) members. In the attacks U Tin U sustained a small cut on the face when his windshield shattered, and Aung San Suu Kyi's car was hit with an iron bar which left a large hole. Riot police and soldiers stood by without intervening, except to arrest three NLD supporters.

After the NLD reported the attacks for consideration by the police, the following account was published by the regime of the attack. Note that it refers to ‘Suu Kyi’, without the Aung San:

Last Saturday, 9 November 1996, she had cheaply organizable persons, fanatics and awalas gather … On getting in front of the Bahan Basic Education High school No 2 at Kaba Aye Pagoda Road at about 3.45 p.m., about 200 persons opposed to Suu Kyi threw stones at the motorcade … Suu Kyi will get into trouble if she thinks that every group she sees is her supporters. Upon reaching the stage of being hit by stones openly she will have to exercise a restraint. It is difficult to allege specifically who are opposed to Suu Kyi, for Suu Kyi has caused trouble to various strata of society … As Suu Kyi is becoming more and more apparent as the one trying to destroy all these prospects for stability of the State with her fangs, it is rather difficult to indicate what sorts of people do not want her.[87]

Another article, responding to the NLD's claims that the USDA attacked the motorcade referred to Aung San Suu Kyi as ‘the woman’.

It is clearly a deception on the part of the woman [Aung San Suu Kyi] and her co-conspirators to have more Western pressure on the Na Wa Ta [SLORC] that they cursorily, dishonestly and rather brazenly accused the incident was the work of the government. In other words, it was just a deliberate attempt with low-down plot hatched to damage the political prestige of the steady and mature government which handles political problems so plainly and gently, though it happens to be called a military government.[88]

I will later deal with the foundation of the USDA and the nature of its activities. Suffice here to note that Aung San Suu Kyi compares them to Hitler's Brown Shirts.

‘She is a foreigner’

The regime felt Aung San Suu Kyi's entry into the political arena posed serious dangers to its legitimacy. The authorities initially tried to keep the name of Aung San ‘pure’ by discrediting his daughter as illegitimate and as a foreigner who had cheated on Burma. The regime-controlled mass media attempted to discredit Aung San Suu Kyi by divorcing her from Aung San, and to ‘disinherit’ her from the link to what they claim is their own spiritual father. In particular, they proclaimed her alliance with ‘the west bloc’ and her ignorance of Burmese ways. This was in spite of Aung San Suu Kyi having spent the formative years of her life in a Burmese home environment, between her birth in 1945 right up until 1964, when she would have been nineteen years old, including the last four years in India living with her mother who held the appointment of Burma's Ambassador to India.[89] Her independent life abroad did not begin until 1964, when she went t