The Snake in Burma’s Grass

Burma has its first civilian president in 26 years, an American-educated jurist named Maung Maung, but he is widely regarded as a figurehead and a front man for the generals. The student militants, monks and workers who have brought that beleaguered nation to the brink of civil war with months of demonstrations use an old Burmese saying to describe him; he is, they say, “the same snake in a different skin.”

For now, at least, the demonstrations that led to the appointment of Maung Maung have turned peaceful. They also are spreading beyond the ranks of the students and workers to include white-collar professionals, with an estimated half-million Burmese marching in cities across the country on Monday demanding a democratic government.

The army-dominated Burma Socialist Program Party, the country’s only legal political organization, may have thought that it was making a great concession by reaching outside the military’s ranks for Maung Maung. But, even without a uniform, he is so closely associated with Gen. Ne Win, Burma’s ruler from 1962 until last month, that his choice confirms suspicions that the general is still calling the shots behind the scenes. Maung Maung wrote a flattering biography of Ne Win and drafted the 1974 constitution that perpetuated one-party rule and formalized “the Burmese Way to Socialism”--the odd amalgam of Buddhism, socialism and isolationism that has led Burma nowhere. Lest there be any doubt about where Maung Maung stands, his own autobiography says that he considers the army “my second home.”

It seems unlikely that such a conventional leader will be able to calm the street protests that have shaken every city in the country and claimed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives. The students have threatened a nationwide strike that could bring on another round of violence if the army reacts as it has before, by firing on unarmed civilians and even raiding a hospital where victims were being treated. Previously, soldiers have been authorized to shoot demonstrators on sight, and the bodies of the dead have been cremated so quickly that Rangoon-based diplomats could not estimate the death toll.

To his credit, Maung Maung recognizes that some concessions are needed to restore peace; he has set up a commission to study the “economic, political and social wishes of the people,” promised to return nationalized newspapers to their owners, offered to put a few non-party people in parliament. But the demonstrators, apparently convinced that they are so disfranchised and so hungry that they have nothing to lose, are in no mood to compromise; they insist that they will settle for nothing less than an open, multiparty government and the release of the country’s leading political prisoners.

Those of us consigned to watch from a distance--Burma has banned foreign journalists--can only hope that more violence can be averted. The danger is that more Burmese will be killed, that Maung Maung’s government will survive no longer than that of his immediate predecessor, Gen. Sein Lwin, who lasted 17 days, and that Burma will drift ever closer to chaos.