Any lingering hope that the generals who run Burma are genuinely interested in democratic reform has now been dashed. The long-delayed guidelines for a new constitution that were reported on Monday make clear their ultimate goal: the enshrinement of their power.
The national convention that produced the guidelines -- a key step in the junta's "road map to democracy" -- first met in 1993, three years after the junta held a set of elections in which Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won by a landslide vote. The junta rejected those election results on the grounds that Burma needed a new constitution. Now, 17 years later, we're finally getting a look at the promised document -- and democracy is nowhere in sight.
For a start, the constitution ensures that the military will retain near-total control of the government. Military officers must occupy at least 25% of the seats in Parliament (where many votes require 75% approval); the ministers of defense, security, home affairs and border affairs must be military officers as well, nominated by the military commander-in-chief. In the event of a vaguely defined "national emergency," the commander-in-chief, not the president, will assume control of the state.
The constitution provides for an elected president, but the system is rigged so that he is likely to be from a military background too. An electoral college will nominate three candidates, one of whom must be a military officer. These candidates will then be voted on by Parliament, where the military officer is practically guaranteed 25% of the vote.
That provision may not seem an insurmountable obstacle to real democracy, until you consider that Burma's largest "political parties" today are all pro-military groups. The two parties with the most support in the 1990 election -- the National League for Democracy and the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy -- have been disbanded and their leaders imprisoned.
The judiciary is equally corrupted. The new constitution sets up three separate judicial systems to ensure that military and police officials don't have to answer to civilian law. Military officers will be tried only in military courts, and the police only in police courts. Retroactive punishment for crimes committed in the past is specifically forbidden. Other parts of the constitution provide varying degrees of economic and political autonomy for different parts of the country, largely based on cease-fire agreements the State Peace and Development Council has reached with various ethnic groups.
It's unclear why the regime released the guidelines now. Pressure from the U.S. to bring Burma's human-rights abuses in front of the United Nations Security Council could have played a role; so, too, could pressure from China, which doesn't need another rogue nation it does business with put under an international human-rights spotlight. Even the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, historically a supporter of the Burmese junta, has turned wary.
It could be tempting in some quarters (think United Nations) to hail Monday's announcement as a sign of change. That would be a mistake. If anything, Monday's guidelines reveal the true character of the Burmese junta. The generals have been running Burma since 1988, when they seized power after crushing a pro-democracy uprising. They're not about to let any constitution change that.