People’s Democratic Movement in Post-colonial Period: A Comparative Study of Myanmar, Indonesia and the Philippines
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Abstract
This paper is aimed to compare the political transition patterns and political movement methods of people in Myanmar, Indonesia, and the Philippines in post-colonial. Using qualitative research emphasizes documentary data collection and data analysis by historical research through the concepts of political transition, social movement, and student movement. Presenting social movement groups characteristics based on resource mobilization and student movement tactics against mentioned political transitions.The results of the study show that in the post-colonial period, the political transitions in three of said countries had moved to the democratic period after independence. However, there were still limitations caused by the economic downturn and the conflicts of various political and social groups which changed from the parliamentary democracy to the authoritarian regime. The military dictatorship under General Ne Win launched the Burmese-style socialist development policy from 1962 to 1988. The authoritarian regime of Suharto’s New Order Policy was implemented from 1967 to 1998 in Indonesia. President Marcos declared martial law from 1972 to 1981 to eliminate opposition and dissidents in the Philippines. The people’s political movements in these countries consisted of the uprising of 8-8-88 students, people, and monks who joined the Burmese dictatorship protest (August 8, 1988) in Myanmar; the 1998 Indonesian student movement; and the People’s Power Revolution or EDSA or Yellow Revolution in the Philippines during 1986. The suggestions are to adopt the participatory democracy concept to strengthen the groups’ potential and efficiently promote the knowledge of people’s movement. The strong and weak factors learned from people’s political movements in each country could be decent lessons for people’s movement strategies or tactics in other Southeast Asian countries in the future.
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