Introduction
Photo credit Guardian
Myanmar’s political crisis is often described in a single dimension: who holds power, and how it might be transferred. Yet three very different sources — Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s 1990 essay Freedom from Fear, a personal interview with former Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, and Hla Soe Wai’s commentary on Tony Waters’ analysis of Myanmar’s “politics of fear” — converge on a deeper and more difficult question. It is not simply who controls the state, but who fears whom, and why, and why the different communities of the country have stopped trusting one another. Read together, these three perspectives suggest that lasting reconciliation in Myanmar will not come from a redistribution of power alone. It will come only when fear is replaced by mutual trust, and domination is replaced by mutual respect.
Fear as the Root, Not Just a Symptom, of Corruption
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s essay reframed corruption not primarily as a financial crime but as a moral and psychological condition. Drawing on the Buddhist concept of the four a-gati — deviation caused by desire, by ill will, by ignorance, and by fear — she argued that fear, bhaya-gati, is the most corrosive of the four, because it quietly feeds the other three. A ruler who is afraid of losing power will act out of desire to keep it, out of ill will toward those who threaten it, and out of a willful ignorance of inconvenient truths. Crucially, she insisted that fear corrupts in both directions: it corrupts those who hold power and are terrified of losing it, and it corrupts those who are ruled and are too afraid to resist injustice. This is the essay’s most important insight for the question of reconciliation — fear is not something only the powerless experience. It grips the powerful as well.
The View from the Negotiating Table: Mahathir’s Warning and His Hope
This same dynamic emerges vividly in the interview with Tun Dr Mahathir. Asked whether Myanmar’s generals might ever willingly relinquish power, his answer was sober rather than optimistic. He pointed to Bangladesh’s Ershad, South Korea’s Chun Doo-hwan, and Indonesia’s Suharto — leaders who gave up authoritarian rule only to face imprisonment or prosecution. In his words, these precedents do not encourage authoritarian rulers to let go easily, because doing so has historically meant exposing themselves to punishment. This is fear operating exactly as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi described it: not simply greed for power, but terror of what comes after losing it.
Yet Mahathir did not conclude that change was impossible — only that it required patience measured in decades, not news cycles. He cited South Africa’s long journey toward a negotiated settlement, and Nelson Mandela’s twenty-seven years in prison as an example of persistence outlasting oppression. He also offered something more personal: reflecting on his own decision to step down from power in Malaysia, he noted that he felt no fear of imprisonment or reprisal, precisely because a different kind of political culture had been built — one in which relinquishing power did not automatically mean ruin for the one who relinquished it. That, he suggested, is the real difference between Malaysia’s experience and Myanmar’s: not simply constitutions or elections, but the presence or absence of a credible assurance that giving up power will not mean annihilation.
His most striking observation, though, was this: even generals, even authoritarians, remain Burmese people, and somewhere within them may still be a wish to see their own country prosper. Reconciliation, in his view, depends on reaching that residual humanity — not simply defeating or humiliating the other side.
Fear on Both Sides: The Missing Half of the Western Framework
Hla Soe Wai’s commentary, built on Tony Waters’ critique of how the West has misread Myanmar’s politics, adds the structural dimension that the other two sources imply but do not fully develop. Waters’ argument, as summarized in the post, is that international peacebuilding efforts between 2011 and 2021 focused heavily on elections, institution-building, and economic development, while paying insufficient attention to the historical distrust and psychological fear embedded within Myanmar society itself — a legacy running from monarchy through colonial rule and military dictatorship.
The essay’s central claim is one that mirrors Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s insight almost exactly: fear does not sit only on the side of the ruled. Those in power fear losing power, fear being held accountable for past actions, and fear insecurity after relinquishing control — and this fear entrenches authoritarian rule as surely as it entrenches submission on the other side. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: the fear of those in power produces repression, and that repression deepens the fear of the people, which in turn hardens the resolve of the rulers to never let go. Breaking this cycle, the commentary argues, cannot be achieved through constitutions, elections, or economic aid alone. It requires reducing fear, rebuilding trust, cultivating mutual respect, and grounding the exercise of power in ethics and accountability.
This is where the reference to U Hpo Hlaing’s concept of “Burmese Native Democracy” becomes significant. It describes governance not as a one-directional relationship in which rulers command and subjects obey, but as a relationship built on mutual responsibility, respect, and trust between those who govern and those who are governed. This is a homegrown vision of legitimate authority — not imported from the West, but rooted in Myanmar’s own political thought — and it aligns closely with what both Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Mahathir point toward from different angles.
Toward Mutual Trust and Respect
Taken together, these three sources outline what genuine reconciliation in Myanmar would require:
First, an honest reckoning with fear on all sides. The military’s refusal to negotiate is not simply stubbornness; it reflects a calculated fear of the fate that has befallen other fallen strongmen. Recognizing this does not mean excusing repression, but it does mean that any credible path forward must address what happens to those who step back from power — not merely how to remove them from it.
Second, patience measured honestly. Both Mahathir’s account of South Africa’s decades-long process and Malaysia’s own centuries-long path to independence caution against expecting rapid transformation. Impatience, understandable as it is after generations of suffering, can itself become an obstacle if it leads to actions — on either side — that deepen fear rather than reduce it.
Third, recognition of the shared humanity Mahathir pointed to. Even those currently exercising authoritarian power remain part of the Burmese national community. A reconciliation process that treats every actor as either wholly villain or wholly victim forecloses the possibility of the very trust it needs to build.
Fourth, a return to indigenous ideas of accountable governance, such as U Hpo Hlaing’s vision of mutual responsibility between rulers and ruled, rather than relying solely on externally imported templates of democratization that, as Waters argues, have historically underweighted the psychological and historical roots of Myanmar’s distrust.
Conclusion
None of these three sources offers a quick formula for reconciliation, and none pretends the road will be short. What they share is a conviction that the essential ingredient is not a new law, a new election, or a new external mediator, but a change in the emotional and moral architecture of politics itself — a shift from fear to trust, and from domination to respect. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi diagnosed the disease; Tun Dr Mahathir described what it looks like from the vantage point of a leader who chose a different path; and the commentary on Tony Waters’ work reminds us that the disease infects rulers and ruled alike, and that any cure must treat both. If Myanmar is ever to move beyond its current stalemate, it will be because enough people — on every side — find, in Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s words, freedom from fear, and choose in its place the harder, slower work of rebuilding mutual trust and mutual respect.
