The latest from The Economist on the coming election in Burma, with a concluding paragraph that quotes from a commentary by Yeni that I edited a couple of weeks ago (glad to see someone out there is reading this stuff).
When I asked Yeni if he had seen the article, we joked about the use of the word “émigrés” to describe the Irrawaddy gang. We agreed that it sounded rather romantic–as if we were sitting around cafes in Paris, and not in an office in Chiang Mai.
Here is the paragraph in question, which turns to the subject of the recent spate of privatizations in Burma:
In another change the junta has started a remarkable if stealthy process of selling state assets: ports, buildings in Yangon vacated by its shift of capital in 2005, petrol stations, telecoms firms and a share in the national airline. This is hardly a gesture to economic reform—the sales are cooked-up deals benefiting junta cronies. But nor does it seem just the desperation of a cash-strapped regime. Rather, in the analysis of Yeni, of the Irrawaddy, a magazine published by émigrés in Thailand, it is the “formal transfer of the nation’s wealth into the hands of an entrenched elite”, ahead of an election and the implementation of a new constitution which, in theory, should allow greater competition for assets. This elite is “pre-emptively buying up everything in sight”. It has a similar attitude to competition of the democratic kind.
カテゴリー:Burma
