Episode #142: You Down with NUG?
“What must a government do to be worthy of recognition?”
This is a question that Philipp Annawitt poses in a recent The Diplomat article, and discusses with Insight Myanmar Podcast vis-à-vis the NUG and its allies. He lays out a case for how the NUG does, indeed, meet many of the conditions that conventionally define most of the functioning governments in the world…and yet, diplomatic recognition has hardly been forthcoming.
Annawitt, who has an advanced degree from Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), has been a governance specialist, political analyst and experienced project management professional. He has been advising development partners in their engagement with the NUG and CRPH (the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, the legislative group standing in for arrested NLD members)
He writes in his article that the notion of “legitimacy” has evolved: In the 18th century, it meant a government being able to control its territory as well as impose its will on the people, by force if necessary. More recently, the United Nations Charter added the responsibility of a governing authority to protect its population, as well as to provide services like education, electricity, and basic healthcare. Finally, Annawitt notes that “in the early 21st century, the international community established the responsibility to protect [also known as R2P, discussed in detail with Liam Scott on an earlier podcast episode], the principle that a government needs to [be able to] protect its people from harm in order to be legitimate.” Applying these standards to present-day Myanmar, Annawitt states emphatically that “not even the military junta’s apologists claim that [the junta] can do any of this.”
In terms of whether the NUG should be recognized internationally. Annawitt explains there are two ways to answer this question. One is through the question of “legality,” and the other of “functionality.” The latter refers to the functional duties a government carries out, such as overseeing the health and education sectors in a society, international relations, etc. Using this lens, Annawitt begins by noting that a functional government has a “center,” under which there are decision-making bodies and reporting mechanisms overseen by the various cabinet members that reach down to the township level. And all this is supported by the management of a complex financial framework. Annawitt concludes, “Many of these functions, I would argue, are being performed by the NUG as we speak.”
In order to fully appreciate Annawitt’s perspective, it’s important to understand the overall current state of affairs in Myanmar. After the February 2021 coup, the military has never been able to fully consolidate its power. As a result, in spite of its brutality and excesses, the Tatmadaw has not been able to gain control of the country. It has been contested at every turn, and there are sizeable pockets of resistance and autonomy where the military junta does not rule in any form. And although Annawitt acknowledges that the process is far from seamless, he points out that in fact, the NUG (and its allies) carries out many of the commonly accepted, functional duties of a government in those areas of the country not under Tatmadaw control, even including providing security for civilians and administering justice. Therefore, Annawitt asserts that the NUG meets the full range of legitimacy criteria as laid out above in those areas, especially considering the burdens of simultaneously managing an on-going conflict.
So why have so few nations recognized the NUG as Myanmar’s legitimate government? One reason that Annawitt offers is the fact there is some ambiguity around which groups control what and how much land. A second reason in his personal view is geopolitical. China, the major power in the area, supports and invests in the Tatmadaw, and is in a period of flexing its political, economic and military muscles, inhibiting countries in any degree beholden to China, or not wanting to confront China, to openly take sides against the junta.
But recognition aside, he faults the international community for not even showing a modicum of support for the NUG, especially in the face of the junta’s obvious abuses and demonstrable inability to govern well. “Actual support has been very, very limited,” he says, adding that this scant assistance from international partners is “really not defensible!” Yet where substantial foreign support has been excruciatingly hard to come by, Annawitt notes that the robust Burmese diaspora communities around the world have been more than doing their part to carry the torch. Indeed, they have been very active in advocacy and fundraising for the democracy movement, and it is these communities that really have kept the NUG afloat. However, he believes that they could be used even more effectively in lobbying government officials and reaching out to local media.
Turning to another interesting facet of the situation, Annawitt describes the NUG’s large volunteer bureaucracy: tens of thousands of civil servants offering their time and services freely into the future. Annawitt believes this enormous collective sacrifice is quite unique, even noble; indeed, when he has encouraged NUG volunteers to find some way in which their positions can somehow be remunerated, they shake him off, insisting that everyone needs to be willing to give whatever necessary. Moreover, he finds that it is an act of duty that many NUG staffers (and even ministers) carry out with a sense of real pride. This volunteer service can also provide concrete dividends down the road, as he notes that “the track record of sacrifice is then a political factor in determining career chances, and in determining seniority and the rise to a position of power.” He says, “In Myanmar's history of extreme politics, it is this culture of sacrifice that gives you the street cred to rise up, and gives you also the respect of the people.” Continuing the theme of self-sacrifice, he notes that the burden of the funding that supports the NUG—through selling revolutionary bonds, cryptocurrency, providing no-interest loans, fundraising, etc—is borne by the Burmese diaspora overseas, few of whom enjoy anything greater than middle class status. All in all, the sacrifice all the around has been astounding.
Annawaitt describes how this sense of selfless service has played out in Myanmar’s previous democratic movements. In an article for the Southeast Asia Globe, he writes about how this mentality has been ingrained throughout the last three decades in the NLD, as activists felt they had to be willing to do whatever it took to resist the military, without any thought of personal discomfort. Indeed, this spirit is credited with being one of the main reasons that the political party was able to survive for so long under such extremely difficult conditions. And Annawitt asserts that without this spirit of selflessness, there would be no CDM today, so for him, this is “the culture that underpins the democratic aspirations of the country.”
That said, Annawitt also feels that the lack of wages for NUG’s civil servants is a serious issue with major ramifications that urgently needs addressing. “The money that comes in, in a spirit of self-sacrifice, it is used to support CDMers,” he says, adding that any additional funds are often used defending against military aggression, with the little remaining going to health or education needs. Sustainability is a very serious concern.
“So there is this culture of sacrifice, that may actually be inhibiting institutional progress, because resources into the ability to administer and become more effective are not allocated,” he says. “But that's also where I see a big role for development partners to come in with financial resources and technical assistance…On the institutional side, much can be improved with a little bit of support.”
In fact, if more is not done to build up the government structures of the NUG, Annawitt cautions that there is little hope at any improvement for the country or its people, as the military leadership cares little for infrastructure beyond fattening their own pockets. But this, again, would involve foreign supporters taking a more active role than they are currently, and essentially becoming development partners who seek to rebuild institutions in an effective way that can be sustained in a post-conflict Myanmar. “We're not talking about huge amounts to start with,” he notes, adding that it need not start in a full-blown, complex way.
Annawitt stresses the urgency of all this, given the current need that exists. For example, he says, “Students in Myanmar are losing years’ worth of education, so this is going to have an impact on productivity in the future that may be enormous.” He also points out that the recent gains that had been made in overall nutrition have been reversing, and that the healthcare infrastructure is in shambles.
For the NUG to manage the heavy burden of effective governance, Annawitt points out the complexity of its current decision-making process, with so many actors involved. Indeed, coordination is not only needed between the NUG and the CRPH, but also with the National Unity Consultative Council [NUCC], which is composed of democratic leaders, ethnic representatives, and CDMers, among others. Given this complexity, Annawitt thinks that some of the criticism about the NUG that has emerged from foreign observers is unfair, especially given the on-going conflict. “This coordination is very, very difficult. It will be extremely difficult in a national unity government in peacetime,” he says, “But this is very fluid, it's a conflict situation, with pressure on all sides. Not everybody has been friends before they have found themselves having to be allies. So I think it is to be expected.”
Taking all this into consideration, Annawitt gives Myanmar’s democratic leaders high marks for their ongoing work in defining procedural and decision-making protocols. He points to examples of the NUG and NUCC submitting legislation for the CRPH to approve, or the NUG reporting on its progress to the CRPH, as a sign of the legitimacy that the latter is owed based on the results of the 2020 election. “We sometimes forget in all this debate that we actually have an elected parliament in Myanmar,” he notes wryly. “And interestingly, I also think development partners have a bit moved on from that conversation.”
Annawitt brings his analysis back to how these three affiliated entities—the NUG, The NUCC and the CPRH—can function in a coordinated way. He describes the CRPH as a kind of parliament, the NUG as a functional government, and the NUCC as a “society-wide council,” or even “the nucleus of a Constituent Assembly for designing the State in the future.” Or put another way, the NUCC looks at how to build a federal democracy in a post-Tatmadaw state, the NUG submits policy and bills, and the CRPH reviews and approves all of the above.
Annawitt describes the NUG cabinet as working in similar ways to the cabinets of other world governments, the main difference being that the NUG team suffers from an acute lack of resources, as mentioned above. This means that “the preparation of cabinet decisions is not as elaborate as you would have it in a established government in peacetime,” often resulting in the cabinet being used for discussion as well as its “normal” decision-making tasks. “But the basic process of (a) policymaking and then (b) the instruments for policy implementation and the reporting on both the policy-- the narrative side and also the financial side-- all of that is in place.”
Still, the present situation is a long way from being a utopian federal democracy, and Annawitt acknowledges the NUG’s various shortcomings. One is that it has made policy decisions without consulting its ethnic allies, and the country’s minority groups take offense at continuing to feel ignored by Bamar-led bodies. However, even in these cases, Annawitt notes that greater context is necessary to fully understand the dynamics at play; namely, that the NUG has been criticized for its slowness of action and its lack of decisiveness, as consulting with ethnic partners takes time. So the NUG sometimes feels between a rock and a hard place, that it will be criticized whether it acts decisively or takes to the time to build consensus. Another factor, as Annawitt repeatedly reminds us, is that this is not a peacetime government or a mature federal system; rather, it is a functioning but transitory bureaucracy with limited resources, that at the same time is actively resisting a brutal military. “In the current situation, a pressure is there constantly,” he says. “Pressure for survival, security pressure, and communication is really difficult. And the demands, physically, health, psychologically, on all the actors, are overwhelming.”
Annawitt notes that if all goes according to plan and the military is finally defeated, there is a federal democracy charter in place that stipulates how the current interim unity government will phase into a transitional unity government. This is another reason why he feels it is so important for foreign counties to spend the time and resources now to help firm up this bureaucratic infrastructure, and in a way that can bring back in and harness the massive potential of the thousands of civil servants now on CDM, as well as those who still show up at government offices post conflict.
Annawitt explains that international support is an important factor going forward for another reason besides helping the NUG in the short term. In Myanmar’s recent history, there has not been agreement about what the contours of a federal government should entail; in his words, Burmese history is “ riddled with conflict about what federalism actually means even between those actors that have committed to federalism.” If those who need to shape Myanmar’s future federal government cannot agree on how it should happen and what it should look like, success becomes very problematic. So Annawitt’s view is that international support in helping the various actors synthesize a common vision of a federal government would be extremely helpful. This would include a roadmap for how local governance would develop, and a framework that defines the relationship between the Union and the individual states.
In sum, while Annawitt acknowledges the validity of some of the criticism being levied at the NUG, CRPH, NUCC, and other legislative bodies, the international community needs to carefully examine if any other viable pathways exist. As for Annawitt, he believes there none.
“What is the alternative to this succeeding?” he asks rhetorically. “You will not have elections in 2023 that will produce another transition. You will not have a state anywhere close to the boundaries of Myanmar right now. You will not have regional stability. So, whenever we judge what the democratic actors do with their limited resources, we should also look at what the junta regime doesn't do, and is incapable of doing, not just because they're evil and bad, but because they're incompetent! And that is something that I think should be more worrying to countries that frankly don't care as much about the rights of the people or that are less liberally minded and more interested in economic stability. Just think about how spectacularly bad this junta is governing! And then with that in mind, I think anybody in a position of decision-making in a sympathetic country can make a better case about why support to the NUG and the coalition partners of the NUG is a good thing right now.”