Re: Is it true, Burma is bankrupt?

You all made very good points. But, the reality we cannot overlook is
"who are we dealing with?" The military regime who wants to be in
power with a tight control is the one we are dealing with. We want to
loosen the tight control. It is like chicken-and-egg, isn't it? Our
ultimate goal is to achieve "freedom in a responsible nature". Yet we
have to start from somewhere, which is to call for the foreign
investors who have financial and political power to negotiate things.
Well, I am not quite sure if freedom in economy goes hand in hand with
democracy. Adam Smith did not really believe in that. He even said
that Democracy and Aristocracy could destruct economic developments.
He said only "Monarchy" works for the economic development (Adam Smith
1976). This issue is controversial, isn't it? The Chinese economic
reform began with a very tight control. As everyone knows, the tight
control is still there. But why the Chinese are having tremendous
economic development? There is no democracy in Singapore and Malaysia.
But again, the economic development in Singapore is immense.
Democracy does seem to exist wider aspects in India, the Philippines,
and Thailand with slow economic development compared to those two Asian
tigers. The only thing I can think of a good relationship between the
Monarchy and the economic development is the Burmese economic
development under British Monarchic Administration. Burmese did not
have any form of political freedom under the British Administration.
Burmese did not have much freedom in other aspects as well. Burmese
were not introduced with any knowledge about democracy. Yet, Burma had
the most successful economic development in Asia.

Looking at all waves around the world, no one except stubborn American
and some Western foreign policies believes that democracy can be
universalised with the Western perspective. I can understand how
difficult to come in and out of Burma with or without a Burmese
passport. I used to think that not having or difficulties in having a
travel document in Burma is something to do with freedom. After many
years, I came to realize that this is not about freedom. This is
because there is no proper rule and regulation under a constitution.
Rules and regulations vary from Lanmadaw to Kyaut-ta-dar, let alone
Mandalay Division and Kachin State. The current Burmese poverty crisis
does not give us any luxury to negotiate for a fair constitution, i.e.
equal power sharing between the military regime and the opposition
party. We know that's not going to happen. The bottom line is that
we do not have a single bargaining power at all. We know the UNSC's
intervention is not going to happen in Burma given the total
denunciation from China and Russia.

The only thing we can do realistically is to support their idea of
finalising the constitution and calling for the referendum. The
constitution will become a legitimated framework for everyone to walk
on. If the military wants 25% of the important seats in the
parliament, let them take. Both parties will be at least in a legal
ring to wrestle. At the beginning, the opposition party and other
parties will have a room to voice out. Their voices will be legally
documented. Hearing their voices will have to be dealt with another
step or future steps. These are the stages that Thailand, South Korea,
Taiwan, Indonesia, Pakistan and many other countries went through and
some of them are still going through. Having a constitution will
rationally create some rooms for foreign investments. Foreign
investments from the West and East will bring in a small degree of
bargaining power by competitions among themselves. A reformist can be
born from the military through business competitions. The monopoly in
the power will be gradually loosen because of the business competition.
The market competition will create a room for the capacity building
for the small and medium enterprises through contracts, technology
transfers, trainings, and so on. Communities will benefit from the
market competition in varying degrees. This is where the middle class
society can come in.

Cheers!

Tide

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