13 Things that Keep Burma/Myanmar under the Military Crony Complex

By Dr. Maung Zarni

RB Analysis

July 7, 2014

Here is what is in store for Myanmar

Naypyidaw regime will 'tolerate' - dare I say even unleash -- acts of destabilize the social and political environment through its shadow/proxy networks such as 969 and 'League of Defense of Buddhism and Bama Race' - ahead of 2015 elections and in the midst of Aung San Suu Kyi's campaign to change the military's Constitution of 2008.

What is needed is a combination of 1) domestic/popular and effective opposition to this kind of racist mobilization and 2) serious pressure from strategically placed foreign governments and institutions with leverage with Nwa Thein Sein regime.

However, the following factors work in favor of the perpetuation of the military rule, in whatever disguises.

1. anti-Muslim popular racism
2. near complete control of access to natural resources (save a few armed ethnic groups)
3. lucrative business licenses (and conversely corporate greed - such as Norway's Telenor and Statoil and Qartar's Ooredoo - to prey on)
4. the country being strategically important to China (and thus India, Japan and USA) (playing the British Ministry of Defence, the Pentagon, etc. against PLA)
5. the international financial institutions and development funding agencies, whose ultimate missions - however they are framed (for instance, MDG, poverty reduction, economic growth, livelihoods, 3 Diseases, etc.) - are making the emerging post-socialist states work for the international corporations - otherwise known as 'Free Market'
6. Aung San Suu Kyi-led opposition's hopelessly un-strategic and extremely poor organizational and intellectual capacity
7. near-absence of liberal, humanistic thoughts and deeds among average Joes
8. ceasefire deals and negotiations and the IMPOSSIBILITY AND INABILITY of non-Bama ethnic leaderships to gain majority popular support beyond their own respective ethnic circles
9. the irreplaceable UN membership
10. full backing of the regional block - ASEAN - and its equally Neanderthal member states
11. the deeply conservative - some might even say - ideologically and sociologically regressive -- character of the Burmese Buddhist Order
12. the neutered university student bodies that were once officially designated threat to the military; and last but not least,
13. the non-revolutionary character of the Burmese society at large