The military top brass are using Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD government to gain legitimacy, which they are, no doubt, benefiting, seen from the US and EU inviting the military to attend meetings, visiting armament factories and even talks on military to military cooperation. During Thein Sein’s era, the door was not that wide open.

Given such benefit, coupled with what the German termed as “salonfähig”, which could be translated into socially acceptable or presentable in a polite society, the military or Tatmadaw is not about to make an about-turn and seized political power through military coup.

Suu Kyi’s protective human shield for the Tatmadaw’s oppressive rights violations in Arakan, Kachin and Shan States is too effective and cosy for the military to be abandoned. Besides, it could create a situation for emergency rule, like it is now doing by conducting military offensives and the NLD regime would have to comply with, either willfully or otherwise.

In clear text, a situation like selected military emergency rule in ethnic areas could be created, while big cities unaffected by the ethnic resistance and heartland Burma could be controlled by the NLD government, thereby giving a semblance of democratic rule, going parallel with the military rule in ethnic homelands.

The recent USDP sponsored rally supporting the military attacking the Kachin or KIA is to undercut the nascent peace movement and also to show that the military also has public support base.

While USDP and its affiliated parties might like to see the military takes control of the government administration like it had done for the past five decades, the present military top brass are more refined, sophisticated and make use of the NLD provided protective shell, bathing in legitimacy lime light, pretending as though the military is an institution protecting and promoting democratic rule and principles all along. It is not the case and one only needs to look back its decades of human rights violations, which still are the norms of its operation in ethnic states.

Thus, the military would likely stay on as it is now, as a coalition partner with the NLD, and won’t revert back to full fledged military dictatorship, but would strike a posture that it could employ coup d’état anytime it chooses to keep the NLD off balance permanently.

Link to the story : Do they want a return to military dictatorship?