(5) To be responsible to community members. (6) To obey the instructions and directives issued by the people’s government and to defy the orders and laws issued by the junta. The Pa-a-pha movement has continued unabated. In Chin State, some towns declared on 13 March that they were establishing Pa-a-pha, justifying these new autonomous administrative zones on the basis of the 1896 Chin Hill Regulation Act and 1948 Chin Special Division Act, as well as customary legal structures.48 The Karen National Union also declared their territories autonomous in late February. Urban Bamar and minority ethnic groups in frontier areas are using the Pa-a-pha framework as a way to remake the administrative state as a revolutionary governance structure in defiance of the military state. THE SAC JUNTA’S FAILED NARRATIVE “Either I or my enemy, whoever can protect the nation and the religion, let that side win the war.”49 The quotation, attributed to the eighteenth-century founder of the Konbaung Dynasty, King Alaungpaya, and allegedly uttered before he went to war against the Mons, was posted on Facebook by General Min Aung Hlaing’s wife Kyu Kyu Hla. Min Aung Hlaing and his wife have been actively projecting on Facebook and in public performances their alignment with the Buddhist principle of support of the religion by making donations at important sacred locations associated with kingship. These activities function as a way of asserting a claim for the inevitability and righteousness of Min Aung Hlaing’s rise to absolute power. Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung, “Back to the Future? Possible Scenarios for Myanmar”. 48 49 The Burmese version is ငါသည္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ငါ၏ရန္သူသည္လည္းေကာင္း အမ်ိဳးဘာသာသာသနာကို အဓြန႔္ရွည္ေအာင္ ေစာင့္ေရွာက္ႏိုင္သူသာလွ်င္ စစ္ႏိုင္ပါေစ။ 29 21-J07648 01 Trends_2021-7.indd 29 28/4/21 9:34 AM