Those who made the appointment intended it to be a gesture of mollification, an invitation to calm. But to much of Burma, the announcement last week that Attorney General Maung Maung, one of only two civilians in the previous Cabinet, had become the country's President was but another move in a cynical game of new man, same government.
In the wake of nationwide strife that forced the fall of General Sein Lwin on Aug. 12, after only 17 days in power, the appointment outraged the students and Buddhist monks who sparked the uprising against an autocratic regime. The government's failure to...