MAH passed over his deputy, Soe Win, a more formidable figure with his own support base.
All of which suggests that MAH intends to remain in tight control of the armed forces—despite retiring in order to the claim the presidency, an office that he has long coveted.
During the 2021 coup d’état, MAH entrusted Ye Win Oo with the arrests of Aung San Suu Kyi and Win Myint and other senior NLD figures when some senior police figures refused to take part. Since then, he has been a loyal lieutenant in the junta’s high council.
General Ye Win Oo rose to the top job through military intelligence, one of the army’s weaker branches since it was torn down and rebuilt two decades ago. And he is not even a graduate of the elite Defence Services Academy, whose classmates tend to watch out for one another.
They will be disappointed. General Ye Win Oo, the new commander-in-chief, is a weak underling of Min Aung Hlaing’s.
The likelihood that MAH’s successor would challenge him or plot a new course for the country was always low. But with Ye Win Oo, it is much lower than hoped for.
Even allies of Myanmar’s junta, like China and Thailand, have long found junta chief Min Aung Hlaing difficult to work with. They hoped that this week’s putative transition to civilian rule would dilute his power by forcing him to name a new armed forces commander.
“When Boris Johnson was foreign secretary, the British embassy in Bangkok was sold for £420m ($580m). The grand old building was demolished to make way for offices and shops… The staff decamped to a nondescript corporate tower nearby.”
I’m watching the game on an hour delay and almost texted you to say this before I thought to check if you’d already posted about it
The Washington Post's description of the bodycam video of his arrest last year, and the translation of Mr. Shah Alam's comments, is gutting. Remember, he was entirely blind in one eye and could only see three feet in the other, and he spoke virtually no English.
He spent a year in jail for this.
As we report in this week’s issue of @economist.com, these twin pressures could lock the centre-right out of power in Australia for a generation.
The Liberals can’t win back teal seats while working with One Nation—or if they themselves become One Nation Lite. And they couldn’t rely on both teals and One Nation for supply and confidence at the same time.
If One Nation can displace the National Party in rural Australia at the next election—as polls suggest it would if the election were held today—it would put the Liberals in an impossible position. That is because the Liberals also face a challenge in urban areas from the “teal” movement.
But there is scant evidence for this assumption in the political science literature. One Nation has never polled above 20% nationally before. The same low-engagement voters forced to the polls by compulsory voting may be those frustrated enough to chuck the two-party system out by voting One Nation.
There is a folk belief in Australia that compulsory voting pushes Australian politics to the centre. In fact, when I was reporting from Australia for The Economist earlier this month, it was the one thing on which everyone, across the political spectrum, seemed to agree.
Chart showing One Nation’s share of the primary vote rising above the Liberal-National Coalition’s in surveys.
For a long time Australia seemed immune to the rise of populist right wing parties around the world. No more. One Nation is now the country’s most popular conservative party.
TIL: Attu Island, Alaska is south of Edmonton and west of Auckland.
Watching The Candidate for the first time and very belatedly realizing that Marvin Lucas is… the dad from Everybody Loves Raymond.
Lest you believe that DHS has eased up on Minnesota today.
I was just saying the other day that even Curtis had been silent.
That is not a quote from O’Hara
Thank you, Rima
It emphasized that, actually
That’s definitely not what that quote is saying
No one is saying that they haven’t managed that
"Mr O’Hara, the police chief, called for protesters to stay peaceful. If they manage that, they will have demonstrated considerably more restraint than the armed officers of the federal administration."
“It is a theory best described by that noted terrorist and underrated political strategist Osama bin Laden: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”
economist.com/britain/2026...
“India has barely updated its structures of governance from the feudal-colonial system it inherited at independence. Officials in post-British India simply slotted into older roles; they are still able to rule by diktat.”
India is not the only former British colony about which this could be said…
“In West Bengal it is impossible to get away from Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister, whose image is plastered across walls and public spaces with a devotion usually reserved for Bengali mothers.”
Cults of personality pervade all levels of Indian politics
economist.com/asia/2025/12...
Our leader on the “Donroe Delusion”.
The precedent here is obviously Panama, and while that was certainly illegal under international law, the US had a military base in the Canal Zone, there was a legitimate arrest warrant for Noriega, and there was at least the pretext of an American servicemember killed at a Panamanian checkpoint.
