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Burma's chief ensures loyalty with major army reshuffle

Agence France Presse - August 29, 2010

Rachel O'Brien, Bangkok – The scale of Burma's secretive military reshuffle, its largest in decades, reveals the junta chief's resolve to maintain his superiority as a rare election approaches, analysts say.

More than 70 senior military positions have changed, and top brass including the army No. 3 have retired from their posts to stand in the Nov. 7 poll – the country's first election in 20 years – unnamed officials said.

But uncertainty remains over the future of reclusive leader Than Shwe himself, who has controlled the country since 1992. Reports last week said he had stepped down from the army, a move later denied by officials.

A source close to the regime has since said the 77-year-old and his deputy Maung Aye are "likely to retire soon," but it is not known when they will shed their uniforms, or what roles they will assume in the political sphere.

"The country is awash with rumors," said Burma academic Aung Naing Oo, based in Thailand. "There are more questions than answers right now."

High on the list is whether Than Shwe will take on the presidency after the elections, which have been widely dismissed by activists and the West as a charade to legitimize military rule with a civilian guise.

"Until the day when we have the next president in the not too distant future, only then will it be clear what he will do. He has a lot of different stuff up his sleeve," said Aung Naing Oo.

Whatever his next formal role, the feared septuagenarian is moving carefully to maintain strong support in both the army and the new Parliament, according to Win Min, a Burma analyst and pro-democracy activist.

"In making this biggest reshuffle, Gen. Than Shwe appears to believe that it is better that he hand-pick the new generation of military leaders whom he considers to be totally loyal to him before the elections."

Win Min said the paranoid ruler could be sidelining officials who are more loyal to number two Maung Aye.

This would not be the first time he has manipulated his rivals to maintain a stranglehold on power: in 2004 he sacked and then jailed his own prime minister, the reformer Khin Nyunt.

Burma's all-powerful army is assured a quarter of the seats in the new legislature, in addition to the military retirees who will contest the vote as civilians in the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

Prime Minister Thein Sein and other ministers left the military in April to contest the vote as the USDP, which is not hampered by financial and campaigning constraints unlike other parties. Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the last election in 1990 by a landslide but was never allowed to take power, has been in detention for much of the past two decades and is barred from standing this year because she is a serving prisoner.

The Nobel peace laureate's National League for Democracy (NLD), which would have been the biggest threat to the junta, is boycotting the poll, saying the rules are unfair.

The party was subsequently disbanded by the ruling generals.

More than 40 political parties have been allowed to stand in the election, but some pro-democracy groups have expressed concerns, including over-intimidation of their members.

Junta-backed candidates have a massive advantage – but there are still likely to be rising military stars who resent being forced to step across into politics with the recent reshuffle.

Than Shwe's own retirement, therefore, could "ease some kind of discontentment within the military," where he has "overstayed his welcome" as chief, Aung Naing Oo suggested.

"We've had one man and one man alone since he came to power in 1992. He will leave a lot of unhealthy legacies," he said. "But if he leaves we should see changes in a few years."

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