Myanmar Coup Acronym Salad #2 - CRPH & NUG - where legitimacy lies

It all started with the November 2020 elections in Myanmar. The NLD scored another comprehensive victory in an election - the third in a row. The military and its allied USDP party lamented irregularities but it was clear to all that these claims were largely baseless. The conduct and result of the elections were confirmed by independent observers to be credible.

The Union Election Commission duly certified the elections and the winning MPs. Letters in hand, these MPs made their way to Nay Pyi Taw (or their state and region capitals for the sub-national MPs) in late January to convene the 3rd democratic Parliaments (the 1st Parliaments had served from 2011 - 2016, and the 2nd from 2016-2021). In the morning of 1 February, the generals hit, arresting President Win Myint, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, all NLD cabinet members, the Speakers of both Houses of the National Parliament, and putting the Chief Ministers of 14 Myanmar’s States and Regions under house arrest. The MPs were told their mandate had been nullified, and they should go home.

It is a little odd - 5 months into this coup, with all the horrific violence being committed by the junta, to recall this point. in my first Op Eds on the coup, I called it "the curiously soft coup", as the regime clearly tried to avoid escalation and keep up a constitutional veneer to woo foreign partners with the idea that this was going to be over soon, and a return to democracy was around the corner (I will recall this in detail in a post on Myanmar's State Administrative Council).

And so it happened that the MPs found themselves sitting in Nay Pyi Taw and scrambling to come up with a response in the chaotic first few days after the coup. Messages were flying between NLD and ethnic minority parties, instructions were sought from party grandees in Yangon, Myitkyina, Taunggyi and Loikaw, communication was difficult, and the window for action was fast closing on a response. On 4 February, the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (National Parliament) convened with over 60% per cent of its MPs participating (which constitutes quorum) and among other things, formed an executive Committee to represent the body - the Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw on it 13 MPs of the government party, the NLD and 2 MPs of minority parties - the Kayah State Democracy Party and the Ta'aung National Development Party (later expanding to its current 20 Members). In the following days and weeks, committees representing State and Region Hluttaws spun off in all of Myanmar.

MPs soon dispersed and went back to their constituencies to coordinate the peaceful resistance to the coup and provide support to the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM - see part 1 of this series on the CDM). As the CDM grew, and protests expanded in size, the CRPH took charge of the resistance. It called the general strike on 21 February and issued the Interim Public Administration Plan the day after, a bid to set up a public administration to oppose the junta - (posted below in an unofficial translation I acquired at the time) that went strangely unnoticed in the media at the time.

This was the CRPH's first serious attempt to challenge the junta's control of the country, at a time when the mobilization of the CDM was at its highest - with 100,000s or millions of people on the streets. This is also when the junta changed tack, clearly feeling it could not keep up its soft approach and started massacring civilians. The idea behind the public administration plan was simple: having a big political machine at grassroots levels in central Myanmar but also the ethnic states on the periphery, and having hundreds of newly elected MPs to national and state and region parliaments sitting on their hands out in the townships, why not put them to use - to guide and support CDM, and take over administration.

By early to mid March, the CRPH's programme had manage to wrest control over pockets of territory in the heart of Myanmar out of the hands of the generals.

In Yangon and Mandalay, the junta managed to put an end to these ambitions quickly but out in the Bamar heartlands of Sagaing, rural Mandalay and Magway, these administrations clung on, coordinating protests and CDM and even providing services to residents. The junta reacted by moving from their barracks into the major - and over time also minor - cities, occupying the hotbed areas of resistance, universities and hospitals - and further escalated their violence. The all-out war the Tatmadaw had waged in the ethnic borderlands for decades had come to the Burmese heartland. The junta forcibly established loyal administrations and shut down opportunities for peaceful protest beyond passive civil disobedience.

Meanwhile, the CRPH - in competition with the junta - had been hard at work in building a coalition with ethnic political and armed actors - by mid to late March, the Karen National Liberation Army and the Kachin Independence Army were in open warfare with the junta (these efforts will be covered in a separate post in this series) - and negotiating a common platform for all of Myanmar's democratic forces to come under. The result was the Federal Democracy Charter, released on 1 April after weeks of consultations the CRPH had engaged in with CSOs, ethnic political parties and ethnic armed organizations.

The Charter has two parts - a constitutional vision for a federal democratic Myanmar in the future and a political roadmap to get there. Here is how I summed it up in article for the Asia Times at the time:

The charter’s provisions represent a radical break with Myanmar’s constitutional history by basing “sovereignty of the federation on its states and their people” while upending Myanmar’s military-led tradition of centralist rule. A constitutional assembly will work out the new constitution’s details, which will ideally later be approved in a national referendum. In the interim, the charter established a “National Unity Government” will guide the resistance to the junta, direct public administration, support CDM action and advocate for international recognition. The charter reconfirms that the bicameral union and the state and region parliaments comprised of the MPs elected in November 2020 still represent Myanmar’s people, regardless of the military’s democracy-suspending coup. To make this workable in practice, the CRPH, rather than a full parliamentary plenary, will seek to hold the new National Unity Government accountable. It also settles the relationship of the proposed federal army to be made of Myanmar’s ethnic armed organizations that will lead the armed resistance against the SAC. The federal army will be a franchise under which leading ethnic armed organizations such as the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) will fight the military in Myanmar’s borderlands in the southeast, east and north of the country. These ethnic armed organizations will under the scheme be represented on a so-called National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC), which will direct the war effort against the junta. Under the charter’s provisions, the NUCC will also have political influence, nominating in coordination with the committees representing state and region parliaments in state and region governments. This represents a major concession to ethnic armed groups who currently have no representation in Myanmar’s institutions and no say on the governance of “their respective ethnic states.”

Based on the Federal Democracy Charter, a National Unity Government was formed in mid-April with notable participation of ethnic minority politicians and notable absences among the bigger ethnic groups in the country: plenty of ethnic Chin, Karen, Karenni and Kachin and Ta-ang politicians joined the NLD members and Bamar civil society leaders on the government, but no Shan, Mon or Rakhine politicians serve on the government. Have a look at the ethnic geography of Myanmar here. To be very brief (and necessarily not 100% accurate about it): Rakhine politicians and militia leaders are busy carving out a state for themselves. Mon ethnic political leaders have joined the junta and the Shan are split. Northern Shan armed groups fight the junta while Southern Shan armed groups and political parties continue to sit on the fence. Smaller minorities are either unconcerned (like the Wa) or align based on local political considerations (such as the Lahu who join the junta in its fight against the Norther Shan SSP)

The National Unity Government is the most dynamic element of the institutional eco-system set up by the Federal Democracy Charter. Other processes are ongoing and notable: The NUCC meets but not in public and little of what is discussed transpires. The Federal Army is essentially a franchise, under which ethnic armed organizations, the People's Defence Forces set up by activists in their states and regions and those forces being trained up by the NUG can identify with (there will be a separate post on the armed resistance in this series). The NUG also announced the formation of a federal constitution drafting commission to develop a first draft of the new federal democratic constitution.

For the outsider, what is happening can be difficult to follow, as communication isn't always consistent but essentially the NUG has developed and espoused a number of policies I sum up below:

• Abolition of the 2008 constitution and development of a genuine federal democracy with adequate representation of all Myanmar’s minorities.

• Policy on Rohingya in Rakhine State, abolishing the 1982 citizenship law and establishing a new framework basing citizenship upon birth in Myanmar or to parents born in Myanmar;

• Call for Action on implementation of emergency humanitarian aid to those affected that lays out principle for aid delivery;

• A fledging education policy that seeks to provides education services to students in Myanmar;

• A fledging health policy;

• and a defense policy, guiding the operation of the PDF, and the future Federal Army in line with international humanitarian law and within a framework of democratic control over these forces.

Aside from that, the focus of the NUG is on garnering international support and recognition and seeking to deny the junta support and access to the resources it requires to assert its control over the country. It has called a tax strike and is extering pressure on international investors to divest fro the junta and its economic empire. CDM is widespread among Myanmar foreign service officers, and many have declared themselves loyal to the NUG, most prominently Myanmar's Ambassador to the UN. Progress on recognition is slow, but dogged efforts, expanding international alliances with elder statesmen and opinion leaders, and CRPH's parliamentary diplomacy helps the NUG make inroads on the recognition front. What it has to show for so far is a liaison arrangement with the Czech Republic and the promises of some partners not to deal with the junta's diplomatic representatives.

Overall where does that leave the democratic resistance in terms of legitimacy, both in terms of its representative qualities and its performance:

• The democratic credentials of the CRPH and the NUG as its responsible government are indisputable.

• The Federal Democracy Charter may not be liked by all in its details but the underlying vision is acceptable and desirable for democratic forces & ethnic minorities in Myanmar.

• The cross-ethnic and cross-religious coalition the CRPH and NUG are building / representing is far from universal but it is the most comprehensive coalition in the history of Myanmar.

• Through the Public Administration Programme, the CRPH and later the NUG have sought to establish a credible administration and provide the services the people desire. New service offers in education and health are forming as the resource base of the NUG is slowly expanding.

As we will see in my next post on the junta and its legitimacy and governance performance, it is the comparison with the junta's abysmal record that makes the CRPH & NUG look particularly good.