The Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) was Burma's ruling party from 1962 to 1988 and sole legal party from 1964 to 1988. Party chairman Ne Win overthrew Burma's democratically elected government in a coup d'état on 2 March 1962. For the next 26 years, the BSPP governed Burma under a totalitarian military dictatorship, until mass protests in 1988 pressured party officials to adopt a multi-party system.