TOOLS AGAINST TYRANNY
Do we see countries today that inspire efforts to prevent a global slide towards the supremacy-autocracy model?
A few years ago, Germany might have been considered a potential candidate for such a role. By population, if Russia was excluded, Germany was Europe’s largest country. Its economy looked vibrant. Politically, Germany seemed adept at coalition-making.
Any such picture was conspicuously punctured the other day. Not only did the three-party coalition of the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the Liberal Democrats fall apart. Chancellor Olaf Scholz dismissed Christian Lindner, his finance minister from the Liberal Party, and called Lindner “egotistical and irresponsible” after the Liberals publicly opposed Scholz’s reliance on debts.
Germans will now pick a new parliament in February, when an energetic far-right party will stretch out to raise its strength.
The scene doesn’t seem much brighter in another country once viewed with high expectations: Japan. After a gamble of fresh elections failed to give him a majority, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba now leads a minority government with an uncertain future.
Since the case for supremacy rather than equality, and for strongman-rule rather than power-sharing, is being made with rising vehemence across the world, any country where honorable compromises are made for democracy’s sake would grab the world’s attention and win admiration.
SADDENING REPORT
We have seen again and again that agreeing with your allies is not necessarily natural. We’ve also seen that alliances are not easy to sustain. Still, I was saddened to read a report about Myanmar on the online portal The Wire, which spoke of bitter infighting among opponents of that country’s military junta (known as the Tatmadaw) and also, unfortunately, of fresh misery caused to helpless citizens by some of the junta’s foes.
For years, incredible resilience and bravery has been shown in the resistance to the Tatmadaw, not merely by famed personalities such as Aung San Suu Kyi, but by thousands of students, teachers, peasants, workers, artisans, artists, and people in a variety of professions from virtually every part of Myanmar, and from most of its numerous ethnicities.
This resistance succeeded in expelling the junta from portions of Myanmar and, for a time, in maintaining a joint front. According to Maung Zarni’s report in The Wire, the picture today is different in some major respects.
The writer does not deny that the Tatmadaw’s foes have made gains. He says:
“Over the past year, the anti-junta ethnic armies of The Three Brotherhood Alliance (the Arakan Army, Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army) as well as other very well-established groups such as the Karen National Union, the Kachin Independence Organisation, the Chin National Front, [and the] Kareni National Progressive Party, have made significant military gains against the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s Chinese-backed and Russian-backed military junta that seized power from Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021.”
However, Maung Zarni adds:
“Multi-front fighting involving multiple armed parties, including several hundred ‘People’s Defence Forces’ (or pro-democracy militias) has caused massive civilian suffering among already poverty-stricken communities.
“Myanmar’s armed conflicts are no longer a simple binary, [or a] morality tale of good versus evil. Yes, the Tatmadaw remains the country’s largest armed organization and regularly commits atrocities. [However, its] anti-junta adversaries fighting ‘the common enemy’ also perpetrate their fair share of atrocities against localized ‘enemy’ ethnic populations.
“Today the violence in Myanmar is both vertical – the central state versus the rest in society – and horizontal -- internecine communal conflicts. [D]ifferent parties in these conflicts spout political bromides like ‘political autonomy’, ‘revolution’, and ‘peaceful solution’ to justify their violent actions.”
https://thewire.in/south-asia /myanmar-south-asias-syria-india-rakhine-junta
AGREEING ON THE FOE ISN’T ENOUGH
I have no means of confirming the veracity of Maung Zarni’s report. It is perfectly possible that some would dispute the disquieting picture he paints. Nonetheless that picture conveys a core insight, which is that uniting against your foe is not enough, that the tedious task of working with your friends has to be performed.
In struggles for democracy, the risky exercise of speaking truth to power has always emerged as a critical component. A Navalny stirs us with his bravery, with his fortitude. He may be dead; his truth lives. Navalny’s wife too stirs us. The Israelis who stand up to Netanyahu and demand some relief, some justice for Palestinians, also elicit our admiration. Their counterparts exist in other places where supremacy seeks to supplant democracy.
Speaking truth to your own side, reminding “my people” that we are not always as noble as we claim, that “they”, that other lot, are not always as horrible as we allege, has been shown to be another essential if difficult exercise in making democracy work in a diverse nation.
A SENSE OF FRIENDSHIP?
The willingness of those who are part of a power structure to speak truth to their president, their king, their minister, their chief, their head, or whatever, has also been recognized as being fundamental to any efficient or genuine democracy. And speaking frankly to your boss seems required in any successful business.
Prized as they must be, these tools may not suffice. Finding a way to get along with “difficult” partners or allies may be just as critical as speaking a perilous truth.
Scholz’s German coalition was of three large parties. The foes of Myanmar’s Tatmadaw include scores, perhaps hundreds, of different ethnicities. But the requirement may be common.
“OK, I’ll go along with you this time, and you will go along with me next time.” This spirit of accommodation, or attitude of trust, or feeling of friendship, call it what you will, seems difficult for allies ranged against tyranny to maintain for a long enough period. Yet it may be the cement that will keep democracy standing.
