It was likely that Myanmar would continue to change and reform and it may
come to wear some of the trappings of a democratic state, including having Suu
Kyi and probably her colleagues in many of the postelection ministerial offices.
But to the extent thatMyanmar did continue to reform, it would be that which the
Tatmadaw approved, which it continued to control or believed it controlled, and
very likely that which benefited itself as the self-appointed guardian of the state, as
the state’s core institution and in favor of the interests of its economically vested
senior leadership. To suggest otherwise would be to propose a fundamental
disjuncture between the actions and interests of the institution that, at the time of
writing, continued to firmly direct and control the parameters of political change