Burma’s Former Defense Minister Demands Beleaguered Regime Yield to Interim Rule

Retired Gen. Tin Oo, a former Burmese defense minister whose influence still reaches deep into the ranks of the military, demanded Saturday that the beleaguered government of the ruling Burma Socialist Program Party give way to an interim regime.

“The light of democracy is visible, but the final goal has yet to be achieved,” the 62-year-old one-time army chief of staff told a cheering rally of 50,000 in downtown Rangoon, the Burmese capital. He called for the immediate formation of an interim government “to prepare for democratic reforms.”

Tin Oo’s public plunge into the violent political turmoil that has swept Burma for the past month underlines the potentially fragile relationship between the country’s ruling party and its 180,000-man armed forces.

As a general strike continued into the weekend, paralyzing public services and transportation, some Rangoon diplomats reported rumors in the streets that a military coup is possible, though it is not clear what the army would do if it seized power. Government confirmation of a series of prison riots was another indication of the breakdown of law and order in the country.

Since Wednesday, when President Maung Maung lifted martial law in Rangoon, military patrols have been withdrawn from the capital. Tumultuous anti-government demonstrations, which numbered in the hundreds of thousands of participants Friday but diminished Saturday, have moved through the streets unhindered by security forces.

According to reports reaching Bangkok, only a few key government buildings were under guard Saturday, along with the home of longtime strongman Ne Win, whose resignation and appointment of Sein Lwin as president and party chief brought down raging protests early this month. Sein Lwin allowed the demonstrators one day to protest his presidency, then ordered troops to open fire on the crowds.

The collapse of Sein Lwin’s brief and brutal rule was accelerated by reports of mutinies in Rangoon and other cities. Some military units refused to leave their barracks, eyewitnesses said, while individual soldiers were seen joining the demonstrations. Unconfirmed reports said some troops turned over their weapons to the protesters.

Discontent With Party

Now, said one diplomat, “feelings toward the army are quite warm, despite the shootings two weeks ago. . . . It’s become absolutely clear that discontent is directed against the party, not the army.”

However, according to some Burmese sources, many officers also hold an allegiance to Ne Win. So the army has the potential to tilt the stalemated political equation in either direction.

Tin Oo was joined at Saturday’s rally by Win Thein, an army captain accused of leading an abortive 1976 coup against Ne Win. Tin Oo was sacked and jailed for his alleged part in that coup attempt.

The voices of the former military officers were added to those of leading dissident Aung Gyi and opposition figure Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of independence leader Aung San, over the past two days in calling for an interim regime. Maung Maung has said he will convene the ruling party, itself dominated by former military officers, on Sept. 16 to hear his proposal for a referendum to establish multiparty democracy in Burma, which has been governed for a quarter century by Ne Win’s Burma Socialist Program Party and, more importantly, the personal whim of Ne Win himself.

But in a country where politics were quashed by one-man rule, succession to the aged Ne Win is uncertain in a vacuum of leadership. Reflecting on the chances for a multiparty system, a Bangkok-based diplomat said, “The trouble is, where are all the ‘multis’ going to come from?”

Meanwhile, the reports of violence and mass escapes at Rangoon’s Insein prison and at other jails in Bassein, 90 miles to the west; Mergui, 350 miles southeast, and Arakan state near the Bangladesh border demonstrated the instability of the current rule.

Radio Rangoon said the violence at Insein began with an attempted prison break Friday by about 2,000 inmates, who set fire to buildings and tried to break open the gates.

“Prison personnel had to control the situation and unavoidably had to shoot,” the radio said. “As a result, 36 prisoners were killed and 103 injured.”