Burma The Armed Forces Seize Power

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Red-and-gold peacock banners fluttered over much of Burma last week, symbols of a national student movement that had become an uprising. Once again, hundreds of thousands of protesting citizens poured into the streets of major cities in a concerted effort to bring down the tottering government of the ruling Burma Socialist Program Party (B.S.P.P.). To a large extent they had already succeeded. Burma's second largest city, Mandalay, was under the control of Buddhist monks: saffron-robed holy men, known as sanghas, were directing traffic. In Rangoon, the capital, the entire civil service had deserted the government. A new opposition leadership was working with students and monks to bring rice into the increasingly hungry city.

With the situation deteriorating rapidly, leaders of Burma's 180,000-member military took action. Rangoon announced Sunday that General Saw Maung, Burma's minister of defense and chief of the armed forces, had ousted civilian President Maung Maung, who took office just last month. Saw Maung immediately pledged to "restore law and order" and promised to hold multiparty elections that would end 26 years of one-party rule.

The coup came two weeks after Maung Maung himself had tried to deflect the revolutionary tide by announcing elections. But Maung Maung failed to set a date for the balloting, and the demonstrations went on. By last week the opposition's emerging leadership appeared to be focusing on the issue of how to negotiate a transfer of power. Three leading dissidents -- former generals Aung Gyi and Tin Oo, and Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of one of Burma's great nationalist heroes and the country's newest and brightest political star -- wrote to Maung Maung formally rejecting the proposed elections. They were joined in that demand by former Prime Minister U Nu, who had been ousted from power in 1962. Later, a government election commission reportedly informed the regime that elections without the opposition's cooperation were impossible.

As the confrontation grew, the military seemingly remained loyal to Maung Maung and to Burma's strongman, former B.S.P.P. Chairman Ne Win, who was widely believed to be pulling strings behind the scenes. But last week some 6,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen appeared to have joined the revolt. In Rangoon graduates of the influential Defense Services Academy, mostly majors and lieutenant colonels, issued a statement urging formation of an interim government that would include the opposition. At midweek Saw Maung appealed to the opposition on national television to avoid splitting the military.

That plea was widely interpreted to mean that the government doubted the loyalty of its own troops, and its concern seemed largely justified. Of the nine regional commands in Burma, all headed by brigadier generals, about half are said to remain loyal to Ne Win. But regional command troops are locally recruited and almost certainly would not fire on their own people if ordered; nor would their junior officers. Last week a captain of one of three elite infantry divisions in Rangoon went over to the opposition, creating a new wash of speculation about the fealty of even the most trusted troops in the nation.