MOST POLITICIANS find winning over a majority of the electorate challenging enough. Imagine, then, the difficulties of candidates in Myanmar, who must secure the approval not only of voters, but also of the army's top brass. The National League for Democracy, the party led by Aung San Suu Kyi, a veteran dissident, excels at the first task. It has won the past two national elections with landslide votes. But it is not so good at the second. On February 1st, as mps elected at the most recent poll were about to take their seats, the army arrested them and said that it would run the country instead (see Briefing). Few outsiders had predicted the coup, despite the snarling statements emanating from the high command in the days beforehand, for the simple reason that the army was already in control of almost everything that mattered to it. Under the constitution, which the top brass itself foisted on the country, the army chief commands all the security services. He appoints his own boss (the minister of defence), as well as several other ministers and a quarter of mps. That, in turn, gives him a veto over any attempts to change all this by amending the constitution. The system is designed to preserve the army's interests, no matter what voters say they want. So why would the generals upend it?
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