“At this point in time, it feels like every so-called modern person is taking shots at the NUG.” So said Yee Mon, the defense minister of Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG), during a two-part Burmese-language interview on PVTV Myanmar on September 10-11.
The comment was a response to recent criticism urging the opposition shadow government to reform. The minister added that he understood that such critics were not intending to attack the NUG but only to offer constructive criticism so that the NUG can improve its chances of bringing Myanmar’s “Spring Revolution” to a successful conclusion.
That such criticisms would be publicly made of the NUG, and that the NUG would feel the need to respond to them, would have been unthinkable a year ago. The wave of criticism appears to have followed a Facebook post made on July 7 by Dr. Tayzar San, a prominent activist and a close ally of the NUG, in which he issued a public call for the NUG to reform and change.
Among his criticisms were the NUG’s lack of a proper chain of command, issues involving the abuse of authority of authority and corruption by local administrative (Pa Ah Pha), security (Pa La Pha), and defense (Pa Ka Pha) units – known in resistance circles as the “Three Pas” – and the NUG’s inability to arm its forces in the civil war. (An English-language translation of his post is available here.) Following his post, the floodgates of criticism opened.
Tayzar San’s message came about four and-a-half years after the beginning the Spring Revolution, and it is likely that he chose to post his message publicly after his criticisms were not being heeded internally. This is suggested by the fact that on the same channel as Yee Mon’s interview, a three-part “round table talk with revolutionaries” was uploaded a couple of weeks before Tayzar San’s post. The chat featured Tayzar San; Aye Myint Aung Aung, a Mandalay-based activist; Yangon-based activist leader Nan Lin; and Dr. Soe Thuya Zaw, the commander of the Mandalay People Defense Force. The tea-session echoed many of the points that Tayzar San would later make on Facebook, including the “Three Pa” problems, and the quality of the NUG’s leadership.
During the interview, Aye Myint Aung Aung said that problems with the “Three Pas” mechanism was one of the top issues raised by the people that she interviewed in resistance-held areas. There is no systematic code of conduct for the “Three Pas,” with some overstepping boundaries and encroaching on the other bodies’ responsibilities.
Tayzar San added that one of the reasons why the people have become cold or suspicious toward the revolution is not just because of pressures from the military regime, but also due to transgressions that they have witnessed from revolutionary groups. The talks laid out urgent need for the NUG to reform its operations and address the above issues.
It would be unfair to say that the NUG has failed to notch achievements over the past four years. At the same time, it’s not wrong to say that the NUG started out with a considerable political advantage over the military junta. For instance, it had the weight of international public opinion on its side, as well as a strong presence in the international diplomatic arena, where Kyaw Moe Tun served as Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations. Since then, it has managed to open several representative offices in various parts of the world.
Given this advantage, the current situation reminds me of the classic fable of the Tortoise and the Hare. Has the NUG become the hare, who eventually lost the race to the much slower tortoise due to laziness and overconfidence?
The Playing Field Is Shifting
In 2025, it is undeniable that the junta has gained a number of diplomatic victories. In the early years after the coup, the military was regarded widely as an outcast: Russia was its only real ally, and even China was cautious in how it approached the military.
China became actively involved in Myanmar’s civil war in the aftermath of Operation 1027, a military offensive launched by the Three Brotherhood Alliance (3BHA) of ethnic armed groups in late 2023. The operation gave the 3BHA and its allied resistance forces control over significant territories along the China-Myanmar border. Analysts speculate that China must have given the green light to the operation on the understanding that the 3BHA forces would combat the scam centers based along the border.
However, experts affiliated with the NUG will no doubt claim that China has always been playing both sides and has no intention of wanting the revolution to win, or that it wishes Myanmar to become its client state.
At the 2025 Tianjin Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, which was held from August 31 to September 1, Myanmar military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing met with over 20 world leaders. During the summit, it also became clear that other countries planned to support the military’s controversial election, planned for December, by which it hopes to end the civil war and regain international legitimacy.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was seen shaking hands with Min Aung Hlaing, and said that India supported the military’s election. India has since been reported to have been exploring a possible deal of rare earths with the Kachin Independence Army.
Even Timor-Leste, a public ally of the NUG, has been forced to bow somewhat to the junta. In July, ahead of the country’s long-awaited accession to ASEAN, the government announced that that it would not allow any “illegal organization against the Myanmar government” to conduct activities or open an office in the country, a promise that it repeated last week. Timor-Leste’s President Jose Ramos-Horta was a guest speaker at the NUG’s “Insights on the achievements of Myanmar’s Spring Revolution” conference in August 2024 and the country is one of the few nations to recognize the NUG publicly.
On top of this, U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff letter, which was addressed to Min Aung Hlaing and appeared to confer recognition on his regime, also came as a blow to the NUG, in particular, its strategy of gaining diplomatic recognition and political support in Washington.
Where is the NUG in all of this?
“Owning the Greens”
NUG-aligned media, such as Khit Thit Media, have often referred to the military’s State Administration Council, which controlled the central government from the coup until August, when it was dissolved pending the upcoming election, as “the military losing council” (စစ်ရှုံးကောင်စီ) a play on the word “military council.” That’s not to say that the military’s side does not employ similar insults against the resistance side; it does, and the military even has their own paid army of trolls, which are jokingly called “6,800 Myanmar kyat earners” in reference to their daily rate. But is it necessary to resort to going as low as the military’s propaganda to “own the greens”?
This sort of sentiment would be fine if it just came from sensationalized media, but even some NUG officials participate in this sort of behavior on social media. An August 27 Facebook post from Tu Hkawng, the NUG minister for natural resources and environmental conservation, said that “we need to see that the main problem perpetrator in this revolution is untouched and instead the ones that are the victim are being told to do it this way or do it that way.” Attached to the post was a video of a horde of buffaloes headbutting a sole buffalo that has its neck gripped by a lioness.
“Owning the greens” is fine if your actions speak but the people have come to terms that the Spring Revolution is not going to end in a year or two. The more sensationalized the message, and the larger the gap between message and reality, the more the people will start to question the NUG and its leadership.
The Tortoise and the Hare
By comparing the current situation to the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare, this article is not trying to be “ball ma” – a Burmese word for “military bootlicker” – nor is it claiming that the NUG will lose the race. But it needs to do more than run.
With China’s increasingly active involvement in Myanmar’s conflict since 2024, the military has regained control of the city of Lashio in northern Shan State without firing a single shot, and Beijing is pressuring two of the three members of the 3BHA to cease their offensives reach ceasefires with the military. Even the United Wa State Army, widely considered the strongest ethnic army in Myanmar, announced last month that it would cut off weapons to allied ethnic armed groups due to Chinese pressure.
What the NUG needs to do is to start being proactive. For instance, after the SCO summit, the NUG sent a warning letter to China that inviting Min Aung Hlaing could provoke public backlash in Myanmar and damage relations between the people of the two countries. This letter should have been published a year earlier, after NUG’s own 10-point position paper on China was published in January 2024.
The reform of the NUG was not something that people were talking about at that time. The issue was only floated in late 2024, probably earlier in the inner circles, when NUG Acting President Duwa Lashi La said in a speech that internal reforms were needed and called ministers overseas to come back to Myanmar.
This hasn’t amounted to much. In an interview in December 2024, after the acting president’s speech, NUG Foreign Minister Zin Mar Aung promised that the NUG would make changes “structurally and internally.” She said, “It is not about changing or removing people, but we are trying to make a more functional structure. In 2025, are we the ones going to reform or we will be the one who get changed – that will be the question we need to answer.”
Here we are in September 2025; where are the reforms? The sole minister to have returned from abroad is the health and education minister.
In political terms, the NUG had quite a head-start against the military junta, but it seems that this year the slow-moving tortoise is inching toward its goals. It is possible that the NUG’s talk of change may need to come from overseas. Radio NUG reported on August 18 that Zin Mar Aung met with the Myanmar community in Norway to talk about the changes and BBC Burmese reported on September 4 that a three-day meeting was held in Belgium involving top leaders of the NUG to discuss possible reforms.
The military’s December 28 election cannot realistically be stopped at this point, and the NUG needs to come up with proactive plans on what to do post-election. This is not to sing praise for the junta, as everyone is well aware that the military is not protecting the people but rather its own self-interests.
The takeaway from this is that the NUG’s survival is not up to ministers, officials, experts, the authors of articles like this one, or even “high-paid Western grifters” attached to the resistance cause. It’s time to stop being bogged down by political affiliations and internal politics, and focus on the priorities of a revolutionary government.
First, if ministers and ministries are not necessary in the current revolution they should be dispensed with. Myanmar analyst Sit Maw made this point in an interview with journalist Mratt Kyaw Thu in September 2024, pointing out that the NUG has no need for a Ministry of International Cooperation when it already has a Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Second, if the NUG’s goal is “bottom-up federalism,” the voices coming from the ground should be listened to and NUG officials need to be on the ground as much as possible.
Third, the civilian bureaucratic procedures should be reduced as much as possible in order to produce quicker, more tangible results.
The future of Myanmar is up to its people. The day that the people prioritize their own livelihood and family over the “Spring Revolution” is the day that the revolution will grind to a halt. It is time for the NUG to get its act together. Otherwise, the hare is going to be left behind not only by the tortoise but also by the people of Myanmar.