Myanmar Back under Military Dictatorship

Last year, in 2021 February, in the morning of the day the representative of Parliament convene, the country's Military, lead by Commander-in-Chief Major General Min Aung Hlaing, arrested the president U Win Myint, the state councilor Daw Aung San Su Kyi and his government ministers were arrested in the early morning raid. As Myanmar's military controlled all the security forces in the country, presidential guards and other polices and securities easily gave up and there was no violence resistance.

Earlier, in the middle of the night, all communication channels around the nation were disrupted, including all cellular and internet services. Military conspired to control all media and communication center before the coup event.

Military placed around 400 elected members of parliament (MPs), who were gathered to attend parliament at a government complex in Nay Pyi Daw, Myanmar's capital city, under house arrest and not allow any of them to go out or return to their home. Majority of these MPs were members of National League for Democracy (NLD), the majority party of Daw Aung San Su Kyi, won landslide victory in 2020 election. In 2020 Election, the military backed party, Union Solidary and Development Party (USDP) lost badly. From those elected MPs, 70 NLD MPs took an oath of office in their confined government complex on February 4th 2021. It was act of defiance to the coup leader, who seized executive, judicial and legislative power for a year. Within 3 days, the coup was facing challenge from elected Members of Parliament from NLD.

“Since we are the lawfully elected legislators, we have the right to call a parliament session. Therefore we were sworn in this morning and took the people’s mandate back,” said Daw Phyu Phyu Thin, the Pyithu Hluttaw representative for Mingalar Taung Nyunt in Yangon.

In the months since the 2020 election, the military, USDP and some small allied parties have waged a campaign to discredit the election, pointing to widespread errors in voter lists and irregularities during advance voting by elderly citizens. The Union Election Commission, which is wholly appointed by the government, has dismissed all allegations of fraud. It also refused to share the final copies of voter lists that were displayed on election day. However, according to 2008 Myanmar Constitution, written in Military government era also gave Union Election Commission a final decision and sole jurisdiction over electoral disputes.

Military leaders and NLD Government were trying to solve the disputes. One of the concern is Min Aung Hlaing, the Commander-in-Chief had to retire in the middle of 2021, if law makers did not change the law, and the military chief seem did not want to retire, though he already extended himself 2 times before. But this year, it was on the civilian government's hands, and the party who won in the last election did not seem to favor him. It was heard that the talk between senior government and military officials failed to reach a breakthrough, with the government refusing military demands that the start of parliament be postponed until its claims of election fraud are addressed.

In Short, Myanmar went into the darkest days again!! One person's greed, hunger for power and ruthlessness.

Myanmar people and young generation fought back against Military rules and, I will write more articles of this on going history.