During the decade after independence, without Aung San's steady hand of leadership, the Burmese people exercised a topsy-turvy form of democracy. Key ethnic groups that had united to gain their independence from Britain as a whole sought to exercise their right to legally secede as guaranteed in the 1947 constitution. On the eve of negotiations aimed at reconciling these differences in 1962, General Ne Win, the leader of Burma's armed forces, staged a military coup and seized power.