Bangkok-

As rebels across Myanmar continue to make significant advances on the battlefield against the country’s military junta, resistance groups are plotting behind the scenes the government they want to replace the junta.

It’s unclear whether the effort will succeed, and if not, some analysts fear a political vacuum could be created if the junta-led government collapses.

In January 2022, nearly a year after the military seized power, at the so-called People’s Assembly, more than two dozen resistance groups signed a two-part charter outlining their vision for a new order that would loosely knit Myanmar’s states together into one democratic state. and the federal (or “union”) government.

However, analysts following the talks told VOA they have since struggled to agree on what a federal union should look like and how it should be established.

Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington, recently told VOA: “So far, what has driven them forward is this lowest common denominator that everyone agrees on: federal democracy.”

“But once you actually start talking about the actual issue and trying to define what it is, everyone suddenly gets cold feet and doesn’t want to have their name attached to it. I think everyone is still waiting for this to be over to see what else they can get What,” he said.

Some states in Myanmar are home to large ethnic minority populations, which account for about one-third of the country’s 54 million people. Ethnic rebels known as the Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) have been fighting Myanmar’s Bamar-dominated army for decades to control parts of the states. They have long demanded that the federal union give the states more autonomy.

The new charter responds to their calls but remains vague on how the federal and state governments will share power in the new Myanmar.

The Charter calls the states “the original owners of sovereignty” and provides that the Union “shall be composed of Member States possessing the full rights of democracy, equality and self-determination.” It added that the specific powers of unions and states “should be determined” without elaborating.

where is the power

Ying Lao of the Salween Institute of Public Policy, a think tank in Myanmar, said the debate over the charter in the EAO has focused on how much power each country might want to grant or retain to the union.

Another key player in the negotiations is the so-called Government of National Unity, a coalition of civilian resistance groups that includes a number of mostly Bamar MPs ousted in a 2021 coup. Ying Lao said the dispute over the charter between the EAO and the NUG was more profound and “ideological”, involving the actual ownership of political power in Myanmar.

She said that in the EAO’s view, power belongs to the states, and the unions “only have as much power as the states are willing to share with the unions. That is the federalism they are looking for. But for the Bamar [Burman] The political elite, who claim that sovereignty belongs to the state, the Union of Myanmar, and that the states have powers that the Union is willing to share with them. “

The controversy echoes concerns among some groups about the second half, or Part Two, of the Charter, which lays out a rough road map for moving toward the full-fledged federal union envisioned in Part One. It said the lawmakers ousted by the coup would serve as a temporary legislature without a time limit.

Analysts told VOA that minority groups say they are too close to Myanmar’s centralized, ethnic-led government that they have fought to replace for decades. They said that when this part of the charter was approved at the People’s Congress in 2022, some groups supporting the first part abstained from voting.

Earlier this month, the National Solidarity Alliance and ousted lawmakers walked out of the final days of the Second People’s Congress, which was being held as resistance groups continued to plan a future government. They claimed the incident had spiraled out of control and that the issues raised by some groups went beyond the pale.

The NUG has ethnic minority officers on its staff and is at pains to emphasize its inclusivity. However, Ying Lao said its actions were reinforcing the impression among some that Myanmar’s elite still dominates.

Kim Jolliffe, an independent Myanmar analyst and researcher, told VOA that many minority groups believe a faction of the NUG “still has this Myanmar-centric mentality, or what they call a jingoistic mentality.”

“They support [charter]but they don’t fully believe in the process or that it will actually be implemented,” he said.

Talk less, act more

Many of Myanmar’s EAOs, including some of the most powerful, did not even participate in the charter negotiations or simply kept their distance.

Some are not waiting for the details to be worked out, either, and are already starting to create entirely new governments in their home states.

In June, Karenni armed and civilian groups in Kayah State took the lead in announcing the establishment of an interim government to replace the military government in the entire state. The Arakan Army (EAO) has been trying to establish its own government in parts of Rakhine state it wrested from the military junta. Resistance groups elsewhere followed suit.

“a lot of [EAOs]they now say, we’re not going to get into anything about [charter]we’re just going to build our country, we’re going to come together and then we’ll decide what we need to share as a coalition of equals,” Jolliffe said.

Working out the details “is going to be very confusing,” Abuza said. He noted that he was also concerned that the EAO and NUG, which both have their own militia networks fighting Myanmar’s military across the country, would want to make fewer political concessions as they confront the junta on the battlefield.

The junta may be far from defeated. Continue to defend the capital Naypyitaw and major cities, having advantages in funds and firepower. But the military is widely loathed and has overreached, now losing control of much of Myanmar’s borders.

Analysts such as Abuza and Jolliff said they worry about a federal power vacuum and the problems that could result if the junta fails or collapses before the EAO and NUG resolve political differences.

Ying Lao is more optimistic. She said Myanmar had “never really existed” as a functioning union with a central government capable of meeting the needs of its states, and that without one, Myanmar would likely continue to get by.

“If a functioning federal union is not established soon, things are only going to get worse for the people on the ground. But whether or not this country will remain intact, I believe it will,” she said. “But no one is going to have any real power in this country. … There’s going to be chaos.”

Ingyin Naing in Washington contributed to this report.