Burma

A Vietnam Syndrome for Burma?

By SIMON ROUGHNEEN Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Actresses in traditional 'ao dai' dresses carry a national flag during National Day celebrations in Hanoi in September. (Photo: Reuters)

TEXT SIZE

(Page 2 of 2)

Although the country's parliament has seen some debate over issues such as troubles in Vinashin, a state-owned shipping company, opposition parties are not tolerated and there is no sign that anything like a multiparty system will come to Vietnam anytime soon.

Could Burma, wealthy with natural resources and an investment target for companies from China, Thailand, India and South Korea, take the Vietnam-style route to prosperity, sugaring a “benign authoritarianism” with the promise of higher living standards and economic opportunity?

It is an understatement to say that Intel or Microsoft will not be setting up shop in Rangoon or Mandalay anytime soon. While sanctions preclude any such investment, the chief obstacle to Burma's adopting a Vietnam-style road seems to be the Burmese rulers, who are motivated by retaining power and enriching their families and business associates, in the first instance. An out-dated and complex exchange rate fiddle means that the country's oil and gas income is downplayed in official figures, with the real revenue possibly siphoned off into military spending or personal bank accounts. When a “wave of privatization” was implemented in Burma during 2010, more than 300 state-owned businesses were sold, but the buyers were all regime cronies.

State-owned enterprises still make up a large chunk of the national economy in Vietnam, perhaps at least a quarter, and there are stories of corruption, but the government is capable of convincing Western investors to put their money into the country and has been commended for economic reforms and legal amendments in recent years.

In contrast, economic policy making in Burma has been dismissed as opaque and incompetent even at the best of times, with digressions into numerological folly—such as former dictator Ne Win's decree that all currency denominations should be divisible by 9— marking Burma out as an economic twilight zone, attractive only to those who want to take oil, gas, gems, timber and other resources., out of the country. Even if Western sanctions were reduced or dropped, it remains to be seen whether Burma’s rulers would break with a half century of disastrous economic policies in response.

« previous 1 | 2 |

COMMENTS (4)

Kaungaungsu Wrote:

22/12/2010

Vietnam is a country trying to minimize corruption. But in Burma, corruption is common practice. It is a major difference.

Myanmar Patriots Wrote:

22/12/2010

"According to the August 2009 diplomatic cable drafted by the US Embassy in Rangoon and published by Wikileaks, Sen. Webb deferred to Thein Sein's view that economic development was needed before a country could democratize."
THIS is precisely what our king HM King Schwebomin II has been telling.

Give people a greater choice of making a living through economic development, serfdom (including being a soldier) will gradually disappear and human rights will automatically followed, albeit in mild form. It is then up to the legislature to institutionalise them.

Burma needs to study closely the Chinese and Vietnamese models of economic development. The role of engineering and technology must not be forgotten, nor the role of administrative skills.

u hlawin Wrote:

22/12/2010

Vietnam has been preaching Than Shwe how to trick the western countries by waving democracy flags like any other dictators in the globe for some time.
Employing the policy-enemy of the enemy, regardless, is a friend- Jim Webb called on the US to review its sanctions immediately after his Rambo-like rescue mission (in a civil way, though) in Burma for the release of a US citizen named Yettaw, a mentally challenged man locked up by junta for his trespassing into Daw Suu’s house.
Ever since then Thein Sein became the first junta leader invited to the UN and the US State Department by the US government. Later, the Obama Administration announced to review the sanctions. For the West, in a sense the Than Shwe junta is still in charge, whether election or no election/ democracy or no democracy. But, it would be better for them appreciating Than Shwe’s waving “democracy flag,” for sure. That is the “trouble” we have to live on unless we people of Burma fight ourselves for what we want.

George Than Setkyar Heine (Lon Wrote:

22/12/2010

The chief obstacle to Burma's adopting a Vietnam-style road is the Burmese rulers are motivated by retaining power and enriching their families and cronies only.
And the country's oil and gas income is downplayed, with the real revenue obviously dumped into military spending and personal bank accounts.
In short STEALING is the name of the game in Than Shwe ruled Burma.
The Nov. 7 elections have put paid to some of the optimism in US and Western policy-wonk circles about a looming, if flawed, transition to democracy in Burma given ballot-stuffing by way of advance voting, intimidation and setting electoral rules that preempted NLD and Daw Suu participation in the political process.
The (USDP) won, with 76 percent of the vote, 75 percent of available seats, and with the military guaranteed the remaining 25 percent of seats, as well as key positions in the next government, Burma will be a democracy in name only.
This is the TRUTH and ONLY TRUTH for ALL to NOTE.