1 Pya Aung San

Burma's 1966 low-denomination coinage was issued in the wake of General Ne Win's second coup, which had brought the Burma Socialist Programme Party to power in March of that year. The shift to aluminium for fractional coins reflected a government in the early stages of constructing an autarkic socialist economy — one that would, within a decade, produce chronic metal shortages and repeated coinage interruptions.

Aung San, whose image anchors this series, was assassinated in 1947 before Burmese independence was achieved, making him a permanent political symbol rather than a contested one.