The military has again misused power and seized the seat of authority in Myanmar. The recent coup in Myanmar happened on Monday, 1st of February 2021. While it happened, the country’s 75 year old de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and many others, including social activists were arrested. The country’s military further detained many elected officers who had won at the 2020 national poll.
What Exactly was the Coup in Myanmar?
On one hand, while it can be said that there has been a coup, the picture still reflects that the country’s military is unrepentant about its tactics of exercising military junta, against the popular demand of the Myanmar people. On the day of the recent power seizure, the military in the Buddhist majority Southern Asian region of Myanmar declared a one year state of emergency. The main point of the unconstitutional, unacceptable coup has become one topical issue whose function and meaning negates the country’s people and international reputation.
Elections were held in November 2020 in Myanmar, which the military have not been satisfied about, wherein Aung San’s party had a landslide victory. The military that were the bedrock of the oppositional contesting party at the poll became vanquished after declaration of results which happened in November. The loss, even before the conducted election, especially on the tittering sound of dissatisfaction made by the military had become a dissolved bone of contention by the Myanmar’s electoral committee who claimed that the military’s observation of voters’ fraud was baseless. This means the military developed and depicted interest in the last election held in Myanmar; which is actually a wrong, simply because it negates the social principles of democracy.
That the military has overtaken power; there is roaming fear around Myanmar’s territory neighboring countries, where many citizens had fled to for escape formerly in a military crackdown which once happened in 2017. Within Myanmar, the militias have chosen to blockade roads to show presiding authority. They did disrupt internet, communication and broadcasting services especially at the early hours of the coup—an insignia of their excessiveness.
That international experts have begun to criticize the facade of democracy in Myanmar, there is heaping blame on Aung San Suu for failing in her responsibility to rescind non-democratic infringements that have been popular in the country, especially on the controversial issue of not disposing the constitution the military formulated, in the shortness of her own reign.
Popular reactions are in great solidarity against the military of Myanmar currently. The country’s ever sagacious front-line health workers have decided to put medical services on hold; serving as an expression of displeasure to the unwanted, distasteful coup. Individuals, activists and many others have also decided to throw their unwavering voices by joining the urged nonviolent protest designed for people even from their homes. People in Myanmar have been encouraged to beat the sounds out of their cooking pans loud to the military sight around them. The action is planned to be a state of providence until the next line of action is drawn.
Declaring itself on military–owned television, the coup army had said that the country’s interim President Myint Swe transferred the country’s full authority, including the three arms of government into their hands in a call for an unjustifiable state of emergency.
Sociological Overview
What has happened in Myanmar is a slap to social democracy. It is a series of actions by the military against the essence of the majority wish. It is simply an event of disrespect that the majority of the country’s citizens and international communities are with no part left out, again. For a nation that once experienced economic drought at the expense of her international reputation under the regime of General Ne Win in 1962 which resulted in students and civil unrest, leading to the death of over four thousand people killed by the nasty military clampdown on protesters.
In the way Jeremy Bentham, father of Utilitarianism puts it, it can be said that Myanmar’s military coup action contradicts the ethical theory of classical social theory.
Jeremy as a social reformer defined social utility as a ‘property in any (form of) object, where it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, happiness or to prevent the happening of mischief, evil and unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered’. But not just that, classical social theory even upholds that ‘interest’ of all humans should be considered ‘equally’.
Using this analytical-comparative method, there is fallout of good representation and clear intention by the military which the people of Myanmar are largely dissatisfied about, as they have all through the long years of the previous military domination experienced.
Using the essence of sociology which basically studies social function, all human societies are not supposed to be overruled, especially by forceful eviction and coercion. I am also of the opinion that ‘military invasion of democracy is wrong by all standards’ as it depraves the face value and how every stratum of the society should function.
The call for social order in Myanmar cannot be overwhelmed and would not yield results unless it is permissive of the people’s will. The Myanmar coup is socially unjustifiable, because it remains a social disorderliness, until the structure of Myanmar’s authority is returned to her democratic people as against the war-like military rule.
#JUSTICEFORMYANMAR is a special social function at the moment, even as history takes note. The military invasion as it is known for, reflects an unacceptable omen everywhere.
