ဗမာ « BAMĀ »
— Also: မြန်မာ « Mranmā ».
— Officially: ပြည်ထောင်စု သမ္မတ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် « Prañt‛ōŋcu Sammata Mranmā Nuiŋŋãtå ».
— English: Burma; Myanmar.
— Seat of government: နေပြည်တော် « Neprañtoŭ ».
— Status: Not democratic.
— Structure: Military state. For the recently-deposed semi-democracy, the parliament comprised a House of Representatives (ပြည်သူ့ လွှတ်တော် « Prañsū Hlŭattoŭ ») and a House of Nationalities (အမျိုးသားလွှတ်တော် « ’Amuisā Hlŭattoŭ »), with both houses elected in geographical constituencies (three quarters) and chosen by the military (one quarter). The president was chosen by an electoral college, reflecting various election results but also stacked with military appointees.
— Governing parties: the military (တပ်မတော် « Tapmatoŭ ») and its ပြည်ထောင်စုကြံ့ခိုင်ရေးနှင့်ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေးပါတီ « Prañt‛ōŋcu-Krãk‛uiŋ-Re-Hnaŋ-P‛ŭãp‛rui-Re-Pātī ».
— Heads of government: မင်းအောင်လှိုင် « Maŋ ’Oŋ Hliŋ », commander of the military and prime minister.
— Chief opposition party: အမျိုးသားဒီမိုကရေစီအဖွဲ့ချုပ် « ’Amuisā-Dīmuikarecī-’Ap‛æk‛up ».
— Recent history: Autocrat နေဝင်း « Ne Ŭaŋ » (1958-60, 1962-88 or later), who ran a military-driven one-party state, officially resigned in 1988 July amid a series of pro-democracy and economic protests, identified especially with a main protest on August 8 (၈၈၈၈ အရေးအခင်း « 8888 ’Are-’Ak‛aŋ »). The military took power directly in September and ruled as the နိုင်ငံတော်ငြိမ်ဝပ်ပိပြားမှုတည်ဆောက်ရေးကောင်စီ « Nuiŋŋatå-Ŋrim-Ŭappiprāmhu-Tañcok-Re-Koŋcī » (later နိုင်ငံတော်အေးချမ်းသာယာရေးနှင့်ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေးကောင်စီ « Nuiŋŋatå-’Ek‛jama-Sājā-Re-Nhaŋ-P‛ŭãp‛rui-Re-Koŋcī »). In 1990, the régime held an election; the အမျိုးသားဒီမိုကရေစီအဖွဲ့ချုပ် « ’Amuisā-Dīmuikarecī-’Ap‛æk‛up » won a sweeping victory, but was never allowed to govern. သန်းရွှေ « San Hrŭe », chair of the Council from 1992, gained increasing control of the state. While some in the Council held secret negotiations with NLD leader အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည် « ’Oŋ C‛an: Cu Krañ », and the state cracked down on corruption in the military and on the family of နေဝင်း « Ne Ŭaŋ », the state also cracked down on the NLD, repeatedly detaining စု « Cu » and many other NLD activists. Prime minister ခင်ညွန့် « K‛aŋ Ñŭan » (2003-4), a relative reformer, was removed in a power struggle with သန်းရွှေ « San Hrŭe ». In 2007, ordinary citizens, monks, and democrats demonstrated for weeks in large numbers, finally repressed by the military. Later changes in régime policy brought some hope for eventual transition to democracy, with opposition members, including စု « Cu », allowed into parliament after 2012 by-elections (winning all but one contested seat). Military prime minister သိန်းစိန် « Sin Cin » (2007-11) was elevated to the nominal presidency (2011-6) under သန်းရွှေ « San Hrŭe », and oversaw the transition to the new system. Under that system, three-quarters of parliament was elected in 2015, leading to a near-sweep by the အမျိုးသားဒီမိုကရေစီအဖွဲ့ချုပ် « ’Amuisā-Dīmuikarecī-’Ap‛æk‛up »; but the military specifically excluded စု « Cu » from the presidency, so she took power through an office (state counsellor) created for her. The အမျိုးသားဒီမိုကရေစီအဖွဲ့ချုပ် « ’Amuisā-Dīmuikarecī-’Ap‛æk‛up » again dominated the elected seats in the 2020 election. In early 2021, before the parliament was to convene, the တပ်မတော် « Tapmatoŭ » seized full power and deposed the elected officials, arresting စု « Cu », other officials, and thousands of protesters.
— FH: 7-7, not free. Econ: 1.77 (163), authoritarian.
— Updated: 2021 November 30.
O.T. FORD