State Peace and Development Council

Union of Burma
(1988–1989)
Union of Myanmar
(1989–2011)
Republic of the Union of Myanmar
(2011)
ပြည်ထောင်စုမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်
(1988–2011)
ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်
(2011)
1988–2011
Anthem: ကမ္ဘာမကျေ
Kaba Ma Kyei
"Till the End of the World"
CapitalRangoon (Yangon)
(1988–2006)
Naypyidaw
(2006–2011)
Largest cityRangoon
Official languagesBurmese
Religion
Theravada Buddhism (official since 2008)
Demonym(s)Burmese
GovernmentUnitary state under a Stratocracy
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
LegislatureState Law and Order Restoration Council (1988–1997)
State Peace and Development Council (1997–2011)
Historical eraCold War
18 September 1988
18 June 1989[1]
23 July 1997
15 August 2007
• Elections
7 November 2010
• Aung San Suu Kyi released
13 November 2010
31 January 2011[2][3]
• SPDC dissolved
30 March 2011
Area
• Total
676,570 km2 (261,230 sq mi) (39th)
Population
• 1990
41,335,187[4]
• 2000
46,719,698[5]
• 2010
50,600,827[6]
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
CurrencyKyat
Drives onright
Calling code95
ISO 3166 codeMM
Preceded by
Succeeded by
Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma
Republic of the Union of Myanmar
Today part ofMyanmar
State Law and Order Restoration Council
နိုင်ငံတော် ငြိမ်ဝပ်ပိပြားမှုတည်ဆောက်ရေး အဖွဲ့
နဝတ
Council overview
Formed18 September 1988
Preceding agencies
Dissolved15 November 1997
Superseding Council
  • State Peace and Development Council
State Peace and Development Council
နိုင်ငံတော် အေးချမ်းသာယာရေးနှင့်ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေး ကောင်စီ
နအဖ
Council overview
Formed15 November 1997
Preceding Council
  • State Law and Order Restoration Council
Dissolved30 March 2011

The State Peace and Development Council (Burmese: နိုင်ငံတော် အေးချမ်းသာယာရေး နှင့် ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေး ကောင်စီ [nàɪɰ̃ŋàɰ̃dɔ̀ ʔédʑáɰ̃θàjajé n̥ḭɰ̃ pʰʊ̰ɰ̃bjó kaʊ̀ɰ̃sì]; abbreviated SPDC or ‹See Tfd›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 ‹See Tfd›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.[7]

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[8] 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 Senior General 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.[9] The way the junta handled Cyclone Nargis was also internationally criticised.[10] 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.[11]

  1. ^ The Adaptation of Expressions Law (2). 18 June 1989.
  2. ^ The Law Relating to Adaptation of Expressions, 2011 (1(b),2(a)). The State Peace and Development Council. 27 January 2011.
  3. ^ "၂၀၀၈ ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေ" [2008 Constitution]. Constitutional Tribunal of the Union of Myanmar, Online Law Library (in Burmese). March 2018. Archived from the original on 22 April 2022. Retrieved 17 March 2022. ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေပြဋ္ဌာန်းချက်များနှင့်အညီ ၂၀၀၈ ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေသည် ပထမအကြိမ် ပြည်ထောင်စုလွှတ်တော်စတင်ကျင်းပသည့် ၃၁-၁-၂၀၁၁ ရက်နေ့တွင် စတင်အာဏာတည်ခဲ့သည်။
  4. ^ "Population Pyramids of the World from 1950 to 2100". Archived from the original on 24 July 2022. Retrieved 24 July 2022.
  5. ^ "Population Pyramids of the World from 1950 to 2100". Archived from the original on 24 July 2022. Retrieved 24 July 2022.
  6. ^ "Population Pyramids of the World from 1950 to 2100". Archived from the original on 24 July 2022. Retrieved 24 July 2022.
  7. ^ Shwe Yinn Mar Oo; Soe Than Lynn (4 April 2011). "Mission accomplished as SPDC 'dissolved'". The Myanmar Times. Archived from the original on 16 September 2011. Retrieved 21 August 2011.
  8. ^ Leibenluft, Jacob (2 June 2008). "Who's in the Junta? The mysterious generals who run Burma". Slate. Archived from the original on 3 June 2008. Retrieved 2 June 2008.
  9. ^ "Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi released". Al Jazeera. 13 November 2010. Archived from the original on 31 May 2012. Retrieved 14 November 2010.
  10. ^ Klug, Foster (12 May 2008). "Bush says world should condemn Myanmar". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 13 May 2008. Retrieved 13 May 2008.
  11. ^ Wai Moe (30 March 2011). "Than Shwe Officially Dissolves Junta". The Irrawaddy. Archived from the original on 3 April 2011. Retrieved 30 March 2011.