Pacts, patronage and fear: how Myanmar's junta chief holds on to power

By Devjyot Ghoshal and Panu Wongcha-um for Reuters Photo: AFP / SAI AUNG MAIN Min Aung Hlaing plans to relinquish absolute power after general elections Junta chief came under pressure after battlefield defeats following 2021 coup General kept control through offering loyalists powerful roles, detaining some rivals His name is not on the ballot, and his photographs don't appear on campaign posters. But one man looms large over the general election underway in Myanmar: junta chief Min Aung Hlaing. The 69-year-old general has ruled the impoverished Southeast Asian nation since ousting Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government in a 2021 coup. That sparked a civil war of unprecedented violence, which has displaced millions and left much of Myanmar's borderlands in rebel hands. The general said in a New Year address, as votes for the first phase of the three-stage election were being counted, that he intends to hand over "state responsibilities" to the next government. Suu Kyi's party, however, has been dissolved and other major opposition parties are not contesting the polls, which have been widely criticised as an exercise to keep the junta in power via proxies. The United Nations and Western rights groups have said the elections are neither free nor fair. Reuters interviewed six people familiar with Min Aung Hlaing as well as two analysts of junta politics who offered insight into the thinking of the enigmatic general. Since the coup, he has only had limited diplomatic contact with many of Myanmar's regional neighbours and has rarely spoken to non-state-controlled media. The junta chief and acting president is a rigid military leader, but also a political creature with a fine-tuned sense for managing the country's elites, according to three of the people and the two analysts. Those qualities, the people said, have helped him keep power through battlefield defeats that have dented the military's prestige and hold over the country, exposing Min Aung Hlaing to criticism from supporters of the armed forces. At least 16,600 civilians have died in conflict since the coup, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a coalition of independent international researchers. Pulling back from absolute rule and sharing power through elections functions as "an elite management strategy, diffusing responsibility and preserving regime cohesion," said Naing Min Khant, program associate at the Institute for Strategy and Policy - Myanmar, a think-tank in Thailand. "He became the leader not only because of military ruthlessness but because of his subtle skills that help reduce all sorts of pressure around him," said another of the people, a foreign former official who has met Min Aung Hlaing. "I think if another person was put in that position, there may have been even more pressure on them." Myanmar's information ministry did not reply to a request for comment on Reuters' findings. Photo: AFP / LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA Pacts and loyalists Min Aung Hlaing has handed some generals lucrative positions atop military-linked businesses, even as he occasionally detained other senior officers, including court marshalling one likely successor. Such moves have helped control potential rivals, according to Naing Min Khant. "Power-sharing is managed through elite pacts embedded within the officer corps, where regime survival is closely tied to collective officer survival," the analyst said. At the same time, Min Aung Hlaing has prioritised keeping important positions for loyalists, including some experienced at dealing with foreign leaders, two of the people said. Diplomatic backing from China, in particular, has bolstered the general's position and supported the junta's recent limited comeback on some frontlines, Reuters reported in December. Among the loyalists is retired military officer and former U.N. ambassador Than Swe, who serves as junta foreign minister, the people said. One of them added that the diplomat has been coaching Min Aung Hlaing as he emerges from diplomatic isolation. Than Swe has also since been part of efforts to rebuild diplomatic relationships with the Association of Southeast Asian Nation bloc that froze ties with the generals soon after the coup. Min Aung Hlaing's interest in politics was clear even before the coup, when he was serving as armed forces commander-in-chief, said another person familiar with the general. A previous junta had pared back the military's outsized role in administering the country and handed power to a quasi-civilian government in the 2010s, but the general continued meeting community and religious leaders, the person said. "All that didn't make sense, if you were only a professional soldier," they said. 'The triumphant elites' The fourth of five siblings born to a family from Myanmar's south, Min Aung Hlaing read law at university in Yangon, then the country's capital. In 1977, he passed out of the Defence Services Academy, the...

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