(IHT) It's Right to Tell the Burma

[darnott@xxxxxxxxxxx]

International Herald Tribune (Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) 

November 15, 1999

It's Right to Tell the Burma Regime What It's Doing Wrong 

By David I. Steinberg; International Herald Tribune 

WASHINGTON 


The World Bank study on Burma that has been obtained by the International
Herald Tribune raises
important questions, not only about the policies of the military regime but
also about the role of
foreigners in polarized political environments. 

The opposition National League for Democracy has criticized the bank for
making the study, which
covers poverty, the private sector and agriculture. The league says that
the fact of providing such
analyses, even though they are critical of official policies, serves to
legitimate the government, which it
regards as illegal. 

In Burma, the opposition has usually sought international support in its
struggle against the regime, while
the armed forces have complained that the Western states are against them
and back Daw Aung San
Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate who heads the league. 

The role of foreigners is critical in countries like Burma where
information is treated as power, fear of
unorthodox opinions is prevalent and there is reluctance to be the bearer
of bad news to the top of a
hierarchy that increasingly becomes insulated from reality and the needs of
its own society. 

A high officer, now retired, of the Burmese military government said that
the reason for failure of military
rule under the socialist system before the coup of 1988 was neither
socialism as an economic system nor
the government's capacity to manage it. It was that an elaborate feedback
system established by the
armed forces to get information to the rulers from the people about actual
conditions in the country, so
that policies might be changed, never worked. 

People, including those in the administration, were too fearful of
upsetting the top members of the
regime. So statistics were manipulated and failures covered up. Years
earlier, even the strongman
General Ne Win had said that the government had to stop lying with
statistics because no planning could
take place when the real conditions were not known. 

Yet everyone feared No. 1, as Ne Win was called. This lack of information
about reality and popular
attitudes prompted the military to agree to the May 1990 elections, which
they resoundingly lost and
then proceeded to ignore. 

Think also of Ferdinand Marcos at the end of an era of authoritarian rule
in the Philippines in 1986,
when he made the same mistake by calling elections that Cory Aquino and the
opposition won. 

In countries like Burma, foreigners, financial institutions such as the
World Bank, aid organizations and
even private scholars have a useful function. It is to bring to the
attention of leaders an objective analysis
of the problems that their country faces so that, if political will is
there, improvements can be made in
people's lives. 

That an authoritarian government may not like the conclusions reached by
such analyses is
understandable, if regrettable. The efficacy of their policies is brought
into question. 

That a democratic opposition, however, is not prepared to have objective
studies brought to the
attention of all concerned parties is more regrettable, because the
opposition purports to stand for the
free flow of information that the World Bank and other such organizations
and scholars also support. 

Rather than complain that foreigners legitimate the military by
recommending change, the opposition
should have applauded sound recommendations designed to help alleviate the
all too pervasive poverty
that exists. Foreigners have important roles in authoritarian states. The
World Bank's report on Burma
is a good example. 


The writer, director of Asian studies at Georgetown University and a senior
consultant to The Asia
Foundation, contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune. 


Internet ProLink PC User