Burma: Who's in the Junta?

Not all junta members are equal, however: The three top figures in the SPDC are its chairman Than Shwe; his deputy, Maung Aye; and joint chief of staff Thura Shwe Mann. Than Shwe has been the top figure in the junta since 1992, when he replaced Saw Maung—the leader of a military coup four years earlier, who had begun describing himself as the reincarnation of an 11^th-century king. But as the chairman reaches his mid-70s and has fallen into ill-health, his behavior has also been depicted as increasingly bizarre. In 2006, he abruptly moved the country's capital from Burma's largest city, Rangoon, to the remote town of Naypyidaw—reportedly on the advice of his astrologer.

 

Little is known about internal SPDC politics, but veteran Burma-watchers say that one of the more important dividing lines within the junta separates generals who were educated in the nation's top military schools and those who rose through the ranks. Than Shwe falls into the latter category—he began his career as a postal worker before embarking on a military career that eventually took him to the top of the army's psychological warfare unit. Vice-chair Maung Aye, on the other hand, was in the first class of the elite Defense Services Academy. Tensions between the two leaders reportedly came to a head last fall, when the so-called "Saffron Revolution" led by thousands of Buddhist monks called the junta's legitimacy into question. As in earlier crackdowns of Aung San Suu Kyi's pro-democracy supporters, Than Shwe is thought to have favored of a more hard-line approach than his deputy, who allegedly opposed the decision to shoot at the monks. The rift was so deep that some dispatches out of Burma suggested a coup against Than Shwe was imminent.

 

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