U Saw - Political Career

Political Career

A lawyer by training, U Saw first made his name by defending Saya San, a former monk and medicine man, who became the leader of the Galon Peasant Rebellion (1930–32), at his trial by the British colonial government, and came to be known as Galon U Saw. In 1935, he purchased the Thuriya (Sun) newspaper and turned it into a device to promote himself and his political interests. From 1940 to 1942, U Saw served as the third Prime Minister of Burma. In November 1941, he travelled to London in an unsuccessful attempt to gain a promise from Winston Churchill that Burma be granted Dominion status after the Second World War; at the same time, he made contact with the Japanese to secure his own political future should Japan invade Burma. The British discovered incriminating papers relating to the communications, and U Saw was detained for 4 years in Uganda.

Upon his return to Rangoon after the War, U Saw saw himself as a contender for the office of the first Prime Minister of independent Burma. However, the first postwar elections in Burma of April 1947 returned an overwhelming victory for Aung San's Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL) organization. The victory of the AFPFL had been interpreted as a universal endorsement of Aung San, but that was far from the truth. The AFPFL was a coalition of widely divergent political parties including primarily Communists, Socialists, and the Burma National Army (BNA) led by Gen. Aung San, and, as the subsequent civil war in Burma demonstrated, no single group or individual could claim to lead it effectively as a whole; many to this day however believe that if Aung San had lived the course of modern Burmese history would have been very different, for he was the one leader that could unite the numerous and diverse ethnic minorities as well as the fractious and disparate political groups. Nonetheless, Aung San became the leader of the Governor's Executive Council by virtue of the victory of the AFPFL.

U Saw had attended, with Thakin Nu (the Socialist leader who became the first Prime Minister of independent Burma as a direct consequence of the untimely death of Aung San and the earlier expulsion of the Communists from the AFPFL), the first Panglong Conference in March 1946, convened by the Yawnghwe Sawbwa Sao Shwe Thaik to discuss the future of the Shan States; the Kachin, Chin and Karen representatives were also invited. It made no impact however on the Frontier Areas Administration (FAA), although a United Burma Cultural Society was formed as a result with Sao Shwe Thaik as chairman and U Saw as secretary.

In January 1947, U Saw and the Socialist leader Thakin Ba Sein were the only members of the delegation to London, headed by Aung San, to negotiate with the British government for Burmese independence, who refused to sign the Aung San-Attlee Agreement. Also by 1947, political parties had set up their own militia including Aung San's Pyithu Yèbaw Tat (People's Volunteer Organisation or PVO; ပြည်သူ့ရဲဘော်တပ်), and U Saw too formed his own pocket army called the Galon tat (Garuda Militia, ဂဠုန်တပ်) to commemorate his defence of the Galon rebel prisoners. The former British Governor Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith had appeared to favour older pre-war politicians such as U Saw and Sir Paw Tun, whose popularity was now at a low ebb. The new Governor, Sir Hubert Rance, along with Lord Mountbatten of Burma, however, decided to back Aung San and the AFPFL, inviting them to join the Executive Council in order to calm the post-war political unrest.