After more than five years in prison, Myanmar’s overthrown civilian president, Win Myint, was released in April by the country’s new president: Min Aung Hlaing, the former commander in chief who seized power in a 2021 coup and recently rebranded himself as a civilian leader, in name at least.

The United Nations, the United States, and others had called for the release of Win Myint since he was detained during the coup, as well for the release of former State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, who was instead transferred to house arrest. When her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), was elected in 2015, Aung San Suu Kyi was constitutionally barred from serving as president. She handpicked Win Myint in 2018, after the previous president stepped down, and he let her effectively govern in his stead.

After more than five years in prison, Myanmar’s overthrown civilian president, Win Myint, was released in April by the country’s new president: Min Aung Hlaing, the former commander in chief who seized power in a 2021 coup and recently rebranded himself as a civilian leader, in name at least.

The United Nations, the United States, and others had called for the release of Win Myint since he was detained during the coup, as well for the release of former State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, who was instead transferred to house arrest. When her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), was elected in 2015, Aung San Suu Kyi was constitutionally barred from serving as president. She handpicked Win Myint in 2018, after the previous president stepped down, and he let her effectively govern in his stead.

Though there was a time amid Myanmar’s civil war when the military regime appeared on shaky ground, these concessions likely indicate that Min Aung Hlaing feels more secure than at any other point since the coup. Win Myint’s release followed a sham election in which the NLD was barred from competing.

“I’m really happy for President U Win Myint and his family. But I think he shouldn’t have been a prisoner of the junta for even one second,” said Sasa, a dissident who previously served as international cooperation minister in the parallel government established by deposed lawmakers after the coup. Sasa also questioned how genuine Win Myint’s freedom was. “He will not be allowed to do what the people of Burma have elected him to do,” he said.

A pro-military party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), won the regime-orchestrated elections, which began on Dec. 28 and concluded on Jan. 25. Major pro-democracy parties were not allowed to run, and voting was canceled in large swaths of the country due to ongoing conflict.

Min Aung Hlaing took the presidency for himself in April, after receiving the overwhelming majority of votes from members of parliament—who mainly represent the USDP or are direct military appointees.

Once in office, Min Aung Hlaing appears to have successfully installed loyalists into other key positions. The new commander in chief, Ye Win Oo; Vice President Nyo Saw; and the speaker of the upper house, Aung Lin Dwe, are all generals or retired generals who are longtime loyalists of the regime leader. Despite nominally divvying up power, Min Aung Hlaing will likely rule as he has since the coup: as a dictator.

“Ye Win Oo’s promotion was clearly due to his past loyalty to Min Aung Hlaing, and to his expected willingness to let the new president maintain control over the armed forces,” Andrew Selth, an adjunct professor at Griffith University and one of the foremost academics studying the Myanmar military, wrote when he took office.

The new commander and vice president are both members of Min Aung Hlaing’s “inner circle,” said Richard Horsey, the senior Myanmar advisor at International Crisis Group, adding that their ascendance was an “indication of his power and the lack of internal pushback to his plans.”

Min Aung Hlaing has taken on some risk by officially giving up the commander in chief position—historically the most powerful role in Myanmar. But he was constrained by Myanmar’s 2008 military-drafted constitution, which specifies that the president and commander in chief cannot be the same person. That wasn’t the case under previous military dictatorships in Myanmar.

“However, now that [Ye Win Oo and Nyo Saw] are in powerful positions with their own individual and institutional ambitions—especially the new commander in chief—there is no guarantee they will remain loyal and compliant forever,” Horsey said.

Seemingly the only major position not occupied by someone in Min Aung Hlaing’s close circle is the speaker of the lower house, now held by Khin Yi, a former brigadier general and the head of the USDP. Despite the party’s close association with the military, the USDP has reportedly been frustrated with Min Aung Hlaing’s leadership. In the years after the coup, the party said more than 1,000 of its members were assassinated by pro-democracy rebel groups, with the overstretched military initially unable to protect them.

The speaker is a traditionally powerful role that sets Myanmar’s legislative agenda and can form special parliamentary committees, but how much power Khin Yi will actually wield is not yet clear.

The military justified its coup with spurious accusations of voter fraud during Myanmar’s 2020 election, which the NLD won in a landslide. Min Aung Hlaing promised to hold a fresh vote immediately after seizing power, but a massive protest movement and surprisingly successful armed uprising saw him repeatedly extend a state of emergency instead.

It has been widely reported that China pushed for the election to finally go ahead last December, after intervening in Myanmar’s conflict to help prevent the collapse of the regime. Beijing heaped pressure on an alliance of ethnic armed organizations that operate on the Myanmar-China border to halt their offensive against the military and cut off the supply of weapons to the broader pro-democracy movement.

There was hope among some analysts and diplomats that the election could give rise to different factions within the military establishment, cracking open a sliver of opportunity for reform. But Min Aung Hlaing seemingly managed the election to promote his own clique. More to the point, China’s interventions to ensure the vote could go ahead also made the internal criticisms of the leader—that he was losing on the battlefield and couldn’t protect low-level members of his regime—irrelevant.

Compared with the days of the NLD, the Overton window hasn’t so much shifted as it has closed. “The open questioning of Min Aung Hlaing’s leadership has gone quiet, as a result of the military’s improved performance on the battlefield and Naypyitaw’s better diplomatic position, especially with China,” Horsey said.

Horsey added that the release of Win Myint and transfer of Aung San Suu Kyi are signs of Min Aung Hlaing’s “greater confidence.” “The military has always been reluctant to make concessions from a position of weakness, and the coup was intended specifically to remove Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD from the political landscape,” he said.

Another indication of this confidence is that Min Aung Hlaing formally gave up control of the armed forces. It was long rumored his former deputy commander in chief, Soe Win, was more of a rival than a supporter. But he managed to maneuver Soe Win into a seemingly ceremonial role in a council under the president’s authority.

Now sitting comfortably as president, Min Aung Hlaing has made a few concessions, perhaps hoping for a fresh start with a population that largely despises him. The moves could also be an overture to international backers such as China and Thailand, which have tried to bring the regime out of diplomatic isolation.

Since China helped stabilize the regime’s position, the military has carried out some large-scale prisoner releases, along with a blanket commutation of death sentences. Win Myint was pardoned shortly after Min Aung Hlaing’s inauguration, alongside more than 4,000 other prisoners.

The approach stands in contrast with that of the regime when it was suffering significant losses in the civil war. When the military started losing ground to rebel groups in 2022, then-Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen—who at the time held the rotating presidency of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—tried to throw Min Aung Hlaing a lifeline. He said he would seek concessions from the military in exchange for bringing Myanmar back in from international isolation.

Instead of cooperating, Min Aung Hlaing executed four prisoners allegedly linked to the armed resistance, including a prominent activist and an elected member of parliament, infuriating pro-democracy forces and the international community. The latest concessions therefore likely don’t represent a softening of the military’s hard line but instead a belief that the worst of its opposition is already behind it.