A wary eye on Myanmar’s ‘democracy’
Poor economic prospects have been as debilitating for the citizens as political repression.
Five months after a nominally civilian government took power in Myanmar, the country is awash in uncertainty about who is really in charge.
Workers have taken down the once-ubiquitous portraits of Senior Gen Than Shwe, the dictator who ran the country for nearly two decades, from the walls of government offices. But rumours circulate here that Than Shwe, who stepped down in March, still has the final word on important decisions.
An impoverished population, downtrodden by years of military rule, is parsing a raft of initiatives by the new government and trying to understand whether the country’s transition from military dictatorship to what the state news media describe as “discipline flourishing democracy” is real.
Like the biblical Thomas, they seem to want more proof.
“As far as I can see, there has been no change,” said U San Shwe, a retired civil servant whose comments typify the skepticism heard frequently in Myanmar. “The new government consists of former generals who have habits that they can’t break. They are accustomed to taking bribes, mistreating people and making a lot of money from their positions.”
Fool’s errand
Trying to guess the direction of this country has, in the past, been a fool’s errand. Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has zigzagged from paranoid isolation under decades of military rule to flirtations with openness. The country seems propelled by the competing impulses of conservatives and reformers within the military.
In recent weeks there have been signs that reformers, led by Thein Sein, a former general who was elected president in February, have the upper hand.
The government has proposed peace talks with armed rebel groups that are battling the military for control over resources and for more autonomy. Officials have met three times in the last month with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s leading dissident, who was released from house arrest in November.
The state-run newspapers are taking a lighter approach in their propaganda, refraining from publishing slogans like “Riots beget riots, not democracy.”
The bar for freedom of expression is set so low here that journalists rejoiced when it was announced that they would be allowed into Parliament for its current session, which began Monday.
Amid the tumult of transition, some economic changes have been very substantive. But their benefits to ordinary citizens remain unclear. A major privatisation programme initiated last year is transforming an economy that was so heavily controlled by the state that it could have been designed by Lenin himself.
Scores of state-owned factories, government buildings and companies have been sold off. The local currency, the kyat, has soared in value against the dollar—in part, analysts believe, because money has poured into the country to pay for assets in the government’s fire sale. “There are great opportunities – but only for the cronies. It’s like Russia,” said U Soe Than, the owner of a shop for cellphones and digital music players imported from China.
When the government sold a department store in Yangon, the wealthy Myanmar businessman who purchased the building ordered all of its tenants, including Soe Than, to leave within weeks. Soe Than helped write 18 letters to government officials to petition for redress. All of them went unanswered. But when the story got into Myanmar’s exile media based in Thailand and India, it caught the ear of officials in Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital.
Soe Than says he is now slightly more hopeful that shop owners will be compensated.
Whether an economy controlled by an oligopoly of cronies is better than the state-run system is a point of debate among analysts of the country. Similarly tainted privatisation campaigns in the Middle East created deep resentments that a decade or so later helped fuel revolts this year in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. Yet poor economic prospects have been as debilitating for the citizens of Myanmar as political repression – if not more.
There have been some signs of economic revival: The number of tourists visiting the country was up 23 per cent in the first half of 2011, and hotels in Yangon brim with business travelers, many of them from China, Japan and South Korea.
US and European sanctions have made it difficult for many multinational companies to operate in Myanmar, but the government appears to be working vigorously to get the measures lifted. Officials from the International Monetary Fund have been invited for meetings in October to discuss further economic liberalisation.
And the government has started a charm offensive with Aung San Suu Kyi, who has great leverage on the issue of sanctions. Last week, the government invited her for the first time to the capital, where she met with Thein Sein, the president.
