Future looks bleak for Shwe Mann - and democracy in Myanmar

President Thein Sein, now seen as the top contender for a second term after the ouster of Shwe Mann and several members of his faction from the top echelons of the USDP, arrived at the party’s headquarters in Nay Pyi Taw on Monday for a rare visit and confab with the new executive committee.

Nothing has so far emerged about what was discussed.

It came as Shwe Mann met opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi for an hour on Monday.

The two are known to have developed a close working relationship – one of the factors that pundits say led to the internal party coup against him last on Wednesday night.

It was also not known what was discussed at their meeting.

The embattled former top general could be impeached based on a petition launched late last month and signed by over 1,700 members of his own constituency, for his “disrespect” towards the role of the military in parliament. 

The petition came after he allowed a vote in parliament in June that could have rolled back some of the military’s powers.

The military used its reserved bloc of 25 per cent of seats to kill the proposal, which could have made it easier to amend the Constitution; the process would have eventually been to the benefit of Suu Kyi.

The procedure for impeachment is unclear, however.

What is clearer, say analysts, is that Shwe Mann is in a vulnerable position, and choosing to fight could make things worse for him.

For one thing, Thein Sein’s loyalists would not have moved so decisively against him without a sign-off from the top-most echelons of the establishment.

“We have a plan to protect and cover him,” a USDP member of parliament and supporter of Shwe Mann told Reuters yesterday. “We are watching their moves.”

But in a telephone interview, Kyaw San Wai, who is a senior analyst at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said: “He has no cards up his sleeve.

“For now, Thura Shwe Mann has had his wings clipped, so it is not that dramatic. But with an institution like the military against you, it is probably smarter to go quietly.”

Shwe Mann has little support from within the army.

“They are going to find a way to remove Shwe Mann not just from the party leadership but also as speaker; I would be surprised if they left the job half finished,” a Yangon-based diplomat predicted.

Yesterday, Information Minister Ye Htut announced authorities had shut down a radio station with links to Shwe Mann due to concerns about bias and to prevent it issuing statements about the shake-up in the party. AFP reports that    Cherry FM, a radio station linked to the ousted party leader’s daughter-in-law, was suspended on Saturday until after the election after it was unable to convince the ministry it was able to be impartial or that it would not issue announcements on what was happening to Shwe Mann, Ye Htut told reporters.

Shwe Mann is vulnerable on other fronts.

Insiders in the president’s camp have long compared him in private with Thein Sein, who has a squeaky clean image and whose own family still lives in his home village in the Irrawaddy delta region, with little material change in their circumstances since he became president.

In contrast, Shwe Mann’s two sons are wealthy – and both are on the United States blacklist.

He has also had made no secret of his desire to be president.

“The military institutionally views personal ambition with suspicion,” said Kyaw San Wai. “It is best to toe the line. And Shwe Mann had certainly not been toeing the line.”