A FRONT ROW SEAT TO FIVE YEARS OF CHANGE

By Kim N. B. Ninh*- March 22, 2018

First published in The Asia Foundation website and accessible at: http://www.asiafoundation.org/2018/03/14/front-row-seat-five-years-rapid-change-myanmar

In 2012, when I first started to travel to Myanmar from my base in Hanoi, Vietnam, where I was The Asia Foundation’s country representative, the big question that everyone I met would raise was: “Is this transition to be believed?” The military generals who shed their uniforms to become civilians in the first government elected under the 2008 Constitution sought to convince the public at home and abroad that the transition was real. While the 2010 election that brought them to power was boycotted by the National League for Democracy (NLD), Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s decision to become a politician and run in the April 2012 by-election transformed the political landscape. She won a seat in parliament, and the NLD committed to participating in the political transition.

As I moved from Hanoi to Yangon to reopen the foundation’s long-shuttered Myanmar office in 2013, the question of whether the transition was for real shifted to a focus on penetrating the country’s opacity.

For the first time in many decades, the international community and non-governmental organizations were starting to interact much more directly with the government and the bureaucracy to support the transition. The first realization was that there was so little information to go on – from a lack of understanding of how the government functioned to what powers the military still held. The new government institutions and structures put in place by the 2008 Constitution and established by the government of President Thein Sein in 2011 had yet to be understood, and over the next few years they began to generate a new dynamic throughout the system that needed to be analyzed. And it wasn’t just the international community that did not know; many in Myanmar, inside and outside of government, did not know either.

Years of authoritarian military rule had generated an environment in which information was used as a weapon to keep society from mobilizing and bureaucrats compliant, since they could only have a partial view of how the whole system was organized and worked. The changes brought about by the reforms under the Thein Sein government further complicated a clear understanding of the system, even as they opened up the country to greater freedom and improved access to information. The foundation’s first initiative in Myanmar, which continues to be in great demand today, was a piece of research that documented state and regional governments for the first time. There followed a series of analyses that the foundation carried out to shed light on critical government institutions and dynamics affecting the country’s nascent efforts at democratic transition, decentralization, and achieving peace after decades of bloody, relentless ethnic conflicts. While the lack of information and analysis of the country’s government structure and reform process has improved significantly in the past few years, this will remain a critical need for some time to come.

EARLY SUCCESSES

Some of the early achievements of the transition – the release of political prisoners, new freedom to assemble and demonstrate, the emergence of private media and independent trade unions, and an opening to foreign investors – were dramatic and hopeful. As the foundation began to support government and civil society organizations in the difficult work to transform the country into a democracy, however, it soon became clear that the capacity to carry out long-term structural changes in governance, economic development, and social inclusiveness was sorely lacking. The critical thinking necessary to assess and define priorities and solutions, the organization and coordination needed to generate coherent policies and follow through on implementation; the ability, authority, and confidence to make decisions – these fundamental requisites had been so severely constrained over the years that there was much confusion and fear within the system as to how to actually approach reform. Senior ministers might call for reform, but the bureaucracy to support and carry out such policies scarcely knew where to begin. ‘People-centered development’ became the mantra of the Thein Sein government, but it was a challenge for government officials at all levels to figure out exactly what this would mean in practice, especially when there was no practical guidance offered from above.

Rapid reforms also underestimated the critical need to build trust in society. The first-ever national civic knowledge and value survey that we carried out in 2014 underscored how little the public knows about basic government institutions and the values underpinning democracy, as well as mapping a deep sense of distrust, not only with government but also among the different groups in society. The legacy of weak governance, deep political and social distrust, and a hybrid government system where the military still retained significant control, was what the NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, now the country’s state counselor, inherited when they won the 2015 general election.

The public euphoria stemming from the election has since been greatly tempered by the sobering reality of the challenges of governing a country that has always been much more prone to splintering than to unifying. Successive military regimes responded with coercion and repression and by establishing centralized control, but democratic governments need to find other means to govern. The humanitarian crisis in Rakhine State, which became full-blown in late 2017, with most of its Muslim population fleeing violence to refugee camps in Bangladesh, shows just how raw and incomplete the transition is in Myanmar. But elsewhere, other ethnic conflicts also remain unresolved, and so the thorny issues of who belongs, who gets to decide, and what does it mean to belong, continue to permeate much of Myanmar’s politics.

While the lack of information about Myanmar’s government has improved, this will remain a critical need for some time.

REBUILDING DEMOCRACY

My colleagues and friends here in Myanmar often speak about a traumatized society and individuals coming out of a dark era of global and regional isolation, a lack of information and freedom of expression, and long jail terms for political beliefs and social convictions unacceptable to those who rule. Given all this, the hope we all shared for Myanmar in the early years of the transition must now be moderated with the knowledge that much more time is needed to overcome the trauma, to sort through unresolved issues of identity and nationhood, and to patiently and methodically rebuild from the ground up the basic democratic institutions and values in ways that can survive the challenges ahead.

Over the past 60 years, the foundation has taken part in similarly challenging and long-term changes in a number of Asian countries as they shifted from colonial rule to independence, and found their way through models of statehood and modernity. In a sense, Myanmar is just starting on this difficult journey, and there will be many critical moments to come in which tough choices will have to be made about the nature of a state and society that can respond to public needs and aspirations, but also bring out the best in its people. In the work we have done in the past five years to help build government institutions and processes, particularly at the sub-national level, we have seen first-hand how the dynamics of change unleashed by the transition since 2011 are generating practical reforms that are improving lives and changing the ways in which citizens perceive and interact with the government.

Myanmar is, in effect, grappling at the same time with an enduring legacy of colonialism that it never had the opportunity to fully resolve, a stunted dream of what could have been in the early years of independence, and the lasting impact of decades of inward-looking military rule. The challenge is now figuring out how to democratize under a hybrid military-civilian government – at a time when the region and the world are also in a period of great instability. Given such a complex situation, many different narratives are happening that reflect conflicting visions and dynamics of change. Having had the privilege of reestablishing the foundation’s office in Myanmar and observing and supporting the transition for the past five years, I hope that the efforts of many in Myanmar to rebuild their nation will not become a lost narrative amid the myriad challenges facing this extraordinary country.

*Kim N. B. Ninh is The Asia Foundation’s country representative in Myanmar.