State Peace and Development Council
The State Peace and Development Council (Burmese: နိုင်ငံတော် အေးချမ်းသာယာရေး နှင့် ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေး ကောင်စီ [nàɪɰ̃ŋàɰ̃dɔ̀ ʔédʑáɰ̃θàjajé n̥ḭɰ̃ pʰʊ̰ɰ̃bjó jé kaʊ̀ɰ̃sì]; abbreviated SPDC or နအဖ, [na̰ʔa̰pʰa̰]) was the official name of the military government of Burma (Myanmar) which, in 1997, succeeded the State Law and Order Restoration Council (Burmese: နိုင်ငံတော် ငြိမ်ဝပ်ပိပြားမှု တည်ဆောက်ရေးအဖွဲ့; abbreviated SLORC or နဝတ) that had seized power under the rule of Saw Maung in 1988. On 30 March 2011, Senior General and Council Chairman Than Shwe signed a decree that officially dissolved the council.
Union of Burma (1988–1989) Union of Myanmar (1989–2011) Republic of the Union of Myanmar (2011) ပြည်ထောင်စုမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် (1988–2011) ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် (2011) | |||||||||
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| 1988–2011 | |||||||||
| Anthem: ကမ္ဘာမကျေ Kaba Ma Kyei "Till the End of the World" | |||||||||
| Capital | Rangoon (Yangon) (1988–2006) Naypyidaw (2006–2011) | ||||||||
| Largest city | Rangoon | ||||||||
| Official languages | Burmese | ||||||||
| Religion | Theravada Buddhism (official since 2008) | ||||||||
| Demonym(s) | Burmese | ||||||||
| Government | Unitary republic under a stratocratic military dictatorship | ||||||||
| Chairman | |||||||||
• 1988–1992 | Saw Maung | ||||||||
• 1992–2011 | Than Shwe | ||||||||
| Vice-Chairman | |||||||||
• 1988–1992 | Than Shwe | ||||||||
• 1992–2011 | Maung Aye | ||||||||
| Prime Minister | |||||||||
• 1988–1992 (first) | Saw Maung | ||||||||
• 1992–2003 | Than Shwe | ||||||||
• 2003–2004 | Khin Nyunt | ||||||||
• 2004–2007 | Soe Win | ||||||||
• 2007–2010 (last) | Thein Sein | ||||||||
| Legislature | State Law and Order Restoration Council (1988–1997) State Peace and Development Council (1997–2011) | ||||||||
| Historical era | Cold War | ||||||||
| 18 September 1988 | |||||||||
| 18 June 1989 | |||||||||
| 23 July 1997 | |||||||||
| 15 August 2007 | |||||||||
| 7 November 2010 | |||||||||
• Aung San Suu Kyi released | 13 November 2010 | ||||||||
• Renamed to the Republic of the Union of Myanmar | 31 January 2011 | ||||||||
• SPDC dissolved | 30 March 2011 | ||||||||
| Area | |||||||||
• Total | 676,570 km2 (261,230 sq mi) (39th) | ||||||||
| Population | |||||||||
• 1990 | 41,335,187 | ||||||||
• 2000 | 46,719,698 | ||||||||
• 2010 | 50,600,827 | ||||||||
| GDP (PPP) | 2010 estimate | ||||||||
• Total | $152.150 billion | ||||||||
• Per capita | $3,090 | ||||||||
| GDP (nominal) | 2010 estimate | ||||||||
• Total | $38.080 billion | ||||||||
• Per capita | $774 | ||||||||
| HDI (2011) | 0.526 low | ||||||||
| Currency | Kyat | ||||||||
| Driving side | right | ||||||||
| Calling code | 95 | ||||||||
| ISO 3166 code | MM | ||||||||
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| Today part of | Myanmar | ||||||||
| နိုင်ငံတော် ငြိမ်ဝပ်ပိပြားမှုတည်ဆောက်ရေး အဖွဲ့ နဝတ | |
| Council overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 18 September 1988 |
| Preceding agencies |
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| Dissolved | 15 November 1997 |
| Superseding agency |
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| နိုင်ငံတော် အေးချမ်းသာယာရေးနှင့်ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေး ကောင်စီ နအဖ | |
| Council overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 15 November 1997 |
| Preceding Council |
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| Dissolved | 30 March 2011 |
| Myanmar portal |
SLORC succeeded the Pyithu Hluttaw as a legislature and the Council of State as a ruling council, after dissolving the state organs of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma. In 1997, SLORC was abolished and reconstituted as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The powerful regional military commanders, who were members of SLORC, were promoted to new positions and transferred to the capital of Rangoon (now Yangon). The new regional military commanders were not included in the membership of the SPDC.
The SPDC consisted of eleven senior military officers. The members of the junta wielded a great deal more power than the cabinet ministers, who were either more-junior military officers or civilians. The exception was the Defence Ministry portfolio, which was in the hands of junta leader Than Shwe himself. On 15 September 1993, it established the Union Solidarity and Development Association which was replaced by Union Solidarity and Development Party on 29 March 2010 in time for the elections.
Although the regime retreated from the totalitarian Burmese Way to Socialism of the BSPP when it took power in 1988, the regime was widely accused of human rights abuses. It rejected the 1990 election results and kept Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest until her release on 13 November 2010. The way the junta handled Cyclone Nargis was also internationally criticised. The council was officially dissolved on 30 March 2011, with the inauguration of the newly elected government, led by its former member and Prime Minister, President Thein Sein.