http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/11/18/world/asia/100000001179693/timescast--a-milestone-for-myanmar.html
Video | TimesCast | A Milestone For Myanmar November 18, 2011 - Democracy campaigner Daw Aung Sann Suu Kyi returns to politics, a show of Myanmar's sudden and stunning pace of change.
By THOMAS FULLER
Last Updated: 2:23 AM GMT+08:00
BANGKOK — From dictatorship to quasi democracy in less than a year, the pace of change in Myanmar has stunned even the most cynical observers of the country.
The decision by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to rejoin the country’s military-backed political system has offered a veneer of legitimacy for the reform efforts of President Thein Sein.
The changes appear real, analysts say — the government’s courting of the opposition, the release of some political prisoners, the rewriting of hundreds of laws, the easing of some restrictions on the media. But there is no telling if they are permanent.
Mr. Thein Sein has a “critical one-year window” to show that this liberalization can work, said Thant Myint-U, a historian, former United Nations official and one of the leading experts on the country.
Aung San Suu Kyi shook hand with people outside the National League for Democracy head office after a meeting in Yangon, Myanmar.
Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters
Myanmar remains beset by grinding poverty and economic dysfunction. Many parts of the country are not at peace. Ethnic groups and their large and well-equipped armies regularly clash with government troops along the borders with China and Thailand, areas that produce vast quantities of heroin and methamphetamines sold across Asia.
“It’s increasingly easy to be very optimistic at this point, to imagine the further release of political prisoners, Aung San Suu Kyi entering Parliament and free and fair elections,” Mr. Thant Myint-U said, referring to the 1991 Nobel laureate who was released from house arrest last year. “It’s far harder to be optimistic about the economy. There’s no proper judicial system. There’s no proper banking system, no system to help finance economic growth, where businesses can go get a loan.”
President Obama, in Bali, Indonesia, attending a summit meeting of Pacific Rim countries, said on Friday that “of course there’s far more to be done” in Myanmar.
“For decades Americans have been deeply concerned about the denial of basic human rights for the Burmese people,” Mr. Obama said. “The persecution of democratic reformers, the brutality shown toward ethnic minorities and the concentration of power in the hands of a few military leaders has challenged our conscience and isolated Burma from the United States and much of the world.”
But he added that “after years of darkness, we’ve seen flickers of progress in these last several weeks.”
Political harmony in the country may to some degree now depend on whether the détente between Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi and the military-backed government lasts.
During the coming months, the government faces a potential backlash from business tycoons who made their fortunes in the old political system and from elements in the military uncomfortable with the overtures to the opposition.
Above all, perhaps, the country faces huge challenges in fixing its economy, especially in the realm of banking and finance.
There are no mortgages in Myanmar, and banks are barred from lending for terms of more than one year. Private banks are forbidden to lend to farmers, who make up 70 percent of the country’s population of 55 million people.
The only readily available credit is from informal money lenders, who charge around 180 percent interest per year, according to Sean Turnell, a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney and a leading expert on Myanmar’s economy.
Mr. Turnell says the country faces a transition to a market economy similar to what former Eastern European countries experienced after the fall of the Soviet Union.
“They are starting with a blank sheet,” Mr. Turnell said. The government’s tone and talk have “changed dramatically” but the reform process will be “strewn with crises.”
Billions of dollars worth of revenues from the government’s sales of natural gas have been “squirreled away,” he said, and the country has not published a full government budget in many decades.
“There are many theories about where the money is,” Mr. Turnell said.
Ref:newsyorktime
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