Category: World Diary

Corruption in Asian countries like India is an entrenched feature of popular culture, plaguing every level of society

It was dubbed India’s second freedom struggle. Anna Hazare, a frail but fiery social activist, led a nation-wide anti-corruption campaign that riveted the Indian political class and sent shockwaves through the highest corridors of power. He mobilised the middle class, especially the youth, as thousands poured onto the streets in support of the septuagenarian, who demanded a sweeping anti-corruption legislation to combat political graft. His revolution, which drew worldwide attention, was broader and more intense than any other crusade seen in post-independence India.

But that was more than six months ago. The movement was a symbol of a society in great ferment, but it has since lost much of its momentum; the proposed legislation is far from being passed, and the campaign’s supporters have turned away to focus on other more pressing issues like inflation plaguing the economy.

India’s short-lived revolution has also curiously highlighted how the corruption problem goes far beyond the political class. It is a deeply ingrained cultural neurosis that exists on almost every level of society.

A February 6 survey by the Hindustan Times, a national daily, found that the same youth who chanted mera neta chor hai — “my political leader is a thief” — in support of Hazare’s campaign, later said that corruption is a “necessary evil” in India.

In the survey, which covered over 7,000 people aged 18-25 years across more than a dozen Indian cities, 47% admitted they had willfully paid a bribe. Almost 40% said they would not feel ashamed if they had to pay a bribe.

Further, 46% of those surveyed said that illegal downloading of music or movies from the Internet was ‘normal’ and nearly an equal number said they had purchased pirated software at least once.

In a country blessed with a demographic dividend – more than half of India’s 1.2 billion people are below 25 — the survey, observers say, is a troubling sign of the society’s warped moral mirror.

Software mogul NR Narayana Murthy, one of India’s most celebrated business leaders, recently lamented on a television talk show that Indian youth are seeing “the dishonest become wealthy and powerful, and are thinking this is the way to success”.

But it would be unfair to only blame the youth. Corruption is so deeply entrenched in popular culture that Indians even end up paying bribes for things that are rightfully theirs.

Manvendra Singh, who runs a computer supply firm and participated in one of Hazare’s anti-corruption rallies in New Delhi, says that most government employees receive their pay cheques irrespective of their efficiency or performance, and if you are at their mercy to get any work done “you have to pay” a bribe.

It’s a common perception that it is impossible to be corruption-resistant and do business simultaneously in India.

Observers say the problem is rooted in India’s regulatory apparatus that has not kept pace with the speed of economic liberalisation. Navigating the stagnant bureaucracy and opaque power structures is so frustrating that bribing your way through can often seem like an easier option.

“The system is deliberately made inefficient by those who are in power, so that people who can afford to pay can get their work done quickly but the rest continue to suffer. And with time, the administration becomes run down since rather than devising ways to work efficiently, it is busy thinking of ways to make money by setting up roadblocks to efficient functioning,” Arun Kumar of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi wrote in his August 2011 op-ed in the Indian news daily The Hindu.

But India is not the only nation in the region fighting the menace.

Transparency International’s 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index reveals an alarming level of corruption in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in the public sector.

The index, which covers 183 states and scores countries on a scale from 0, or highly corrupt, to 10, or very clean, declares that the majority of countries in the region score lower than five.

More than a dozen countries in the region score below three – including Vietnam (2.9), Bangladesh (2.7), the Philippines (2.6), Pakistan (2.5) and Papua New Guinea (2.2).

Afghanistan (1.5), Myanmar (1.5) and North Korea (1) rank at the bottom globally.

China and India, the regions two rising giants, are placed 75^th and 95^th in the world rankings. Both countries could stand to considerably improve their efforts against corruption.

The only bright spots in the region are New Zealand, Singapore and Australia, which all feature in the top ten of the index.

Dev Kar, the lead economist at the Washington-based Global Financial Integrity, a research and advocacy organisation working to curtail illicit financial flows from developing countries, says endemic corruption in the region is hard to stamp out.

A recent study found that “on a conservative basis, total illicit financial flows from Asia increased from US$200 billion in 2000 to US$495 billion in 2008, at a rate of 12.9% per annum,” he told <italics> Asia360 News </italics>.

“Illicit flows from the top five Asian exporters of illicit capital — China, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, and India — averaged [nearly] 45% of such flows out of all developing countries during the period 2000 to 2008,” he added.

But Kar offered a glimmer of hope.

“Asia’s share of global illicit flows has been declining in the last decade,” he said. “The top five most corrupt countries transferred just 36.9% of illicit flows in 2008, down from 53.3% in 2000.”

Observers say that transparency in governance is the key to prevent embezzlement of public funds and other forms of corruption.

Finland, Denmark, Sweden and New Zealand – which rank high in the corruption index — perform well on that front.

There also seems be a direct correlation between the corruption index and the United Nation’s Human Development Index. All the above countries that rank high in the former also have a high literacy rate, low inequality ratio, and an enviable human right record.

But for most countries in Asia, it is still a long road ahead to a corruption-free future.

(20 January 2012) — Despite American pressure tactics, Asia’s four largest economies appear set to continue business with Iran’s energy sector, prioritising national interests above diplomacy. The US last week announced embargoes against three Asian companies that have dealings with Tehran, which is overtly belligerent towards the West and Israel.

In recent years, the Islamic republic has alarmed observers by producing near-weapons-grade uranium that it claims is solely for its domestic energy industry. However, many suspect it is developing a covert nuclear weapons programme. Amidst these tensions, Tehran is now threatening to impose a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, in retaliation against Western attempts to isolate it through economic sanctions. The strait is a vital artery through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas exports are shipped.

Washington’s latest sanctions against the three Asian firms — from China, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates — have ruffled feathers and placed some of its allies on the spot.

China, which already bickers regularly with the US over a range of economic issues, reacted angrily to the American action against its firm, Zhuhai Zhenrong, which the US said is the largest supplier of refined petroleum products to Iran.

“Imposing sanctions on a Chinese company based on a domestic [US] law is totally unreasonable and does not conform to the spirit or content of the UN Security Council resolutions about the Iran nuclear issue,” foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said on January 15.

Earlier in the month, China had refused to reduce its imports from Iran, despite a visit by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at the beginning of the year to discuss the issue.

In the same week, reports from India suggested that the South Asian giant would also continue doing business with Iran’s energy sector.

Japan, meanwhile, has distanced itself from reports last week saying that its finance minister Jun Azumi told Geithner during his visit to Tokyo that Asia’s second-largest economy would immediately seek to cut oil imports from Iran.

Speaking to reporters a day after the reports emerged, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said that the comments made by Azumi were a personal opinion and did not reflect his government’s official policy.

Meanwhile, South Korea, which is Asia’s fourth-largest economy and an ally of Washington, sought a waiver from US sanctions on Iran, saying that while its “basic stance is to cooperate with the US”, its economy would be affected if it stopped buying oil from Iran.

The economic restrictions in the region are a result of a New Year’s Eve decision by US President Barack Obama to sign into law tough new sanctions against Iran’s central bank and financial sector, in an effort to force Tehran to abandon its nuclear program.

The sanctions require foreign companies to decide between dealing with Tehran’s oil and financial sectors or the US economy.

No easy alternatives

The responses of Asia’s four largest economies have illustrated how their political decisions are intertwined with their economic realities.

Oil industry analysts Argus Media reported that about 11% of China’s oil imports in 2011 came from Iran, or about 560,000 barrels per day, with the daily average for November increasing to 617,000 barrels — a quantum of supply that China would find difficult to replace in the short term.

Giving an idea of the massive surge in China’s demand for oil, global financial firm Goldman Sachs has forecast that the country will become the world’s largest importer of oil within the next one-and-a-half years.

Japan, the world’s second biggest importer of Iranian crude after China, purchased about 6.85 million barrels in November — or 6.4% of the country’s total imports for the month, according to Japan’s trade ministry.

Japan is also burdened by an increased demand for oil after the earthquake and tsunami last year. The twin disasters caused a number of nuclear power plants to shut down, forcing utility providers to turn to thermal power stations which require oil to operate.

India and South Korea too, are heavily dependent on Iran’s oil and receive 12% and 10% respectively of their overall requirements from the Islamic republic.

The extent of India’s dependence on Iran’s oil is reflected by its intention to send a delegation — including officials from the central bank and finance ministry — to Tehran this week to explore alternative methods of payment that could circumvent US sanctions.

The magnitude of Iran’s importance to the regional energy market is highlighted by the fact that it is the world’s fourth-largest producer of oil with 65% of its exports going to refiners in Asia.

(April 6, 2012) – Not content with the Western-dominated global financial system, five emerging economic powers are paving the way to a new and more egalitarian world order.

At the fourth BRICS Summit in India on March 29, the leader of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) agreed to explore the establishment of a new development agency to challenge the World Bank. The so-called BRICS Development Bank, would generate resources to fund infrastructure and core sector projects in emerging economies.

“This issue [of a BRICS Development Bank] has been brewing for quite some time. This summit brought it to the next practical level,” said Martin Khor, executive director of Geneva-based South Centre, an intergovernmental organisation of developing countries.

“Not only was it the subject of a special statement of the BRICS, finance and economic ministers from these countries met to deepen discussions, giving rise to the expectations that such a bank will be established in the coming year,” Khor told Asia360 News. “The impact will be significant.”

Underlining the seriousness of their dispute with the West’s approach to financial issues, BRICS leaders threatened to hold back additional financing requested by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to fight the European debt crisis unless they gain greater IMF voting power.

In the Delhi Declaration issued at the summit’s conclusion, BRICS leaders said there was an urgent need to “better reflect economic weights” and “enhance the voice and representation of emerging market and developing countries” at the IMF.

“BRICS countries are sending a clear message out to the world that the manner in which the World Bank and the IMF operate — especially in the area of governance — is not acceptable.

“These countries are being pressured to contribute funds, especially to the IMF, to help Europe. But now, they are asking why they should do that if they do not have the corresponding influence [within the IMF],” Khor added.

The need for such an institution highlights “the dangers of existing multilateral organisations failing to mobilise sufficient resources to support large developing countries”, outgoing World Bank president Robert Zoellick told the Financial Times in New Delhi on March 30. Pushing middle-income countries, like China, India and Brazil, out of the World Bank system and forcing them to look for resources elsewhere would also be a “mistake of historic proportions” for the Western bloc, he added.

Interestingly, just a few days prior to the BRICS gathering, Zoellick told the media that the BRICS Bank “is a complicated venture which will have a hard time getting off the ground and [to] match the expertise of the World Bank”.

According to the Delhi Declaration, BRICS finance ministers will come together in a joint working group to study the feasibility of the BRICS Bank. The working group would submit its report at the next meeting in South Africa in 2013.

Many experts agree with Zoellick’s earlier scepticism.

“BRICS Bank would find it difficult to raise money on the markets, as the sovereign ratings of some of the members are barely investment grade. The amount that can be raised, its cost, and thus the unviable cost of lending [would make it an unwieldy exercise],” said Rohit Bansal, CEO and Co-Founder of India Strategy Group, in an opinion editorial in India’s The Daily Pioneer newspaper on March 30.

Sudhir Vyas, a senior Indian foreign ministry official, told reporters on April 2 that the BRICS nations are aware of the issues.

“Such an ambitious project would take time. We don’t set up a bank every ordinary day,” he said.

Pragmatic issues need to be resolved moving forward. How much money should be deposited? What’s the governance structure like? What are the various approved uses of the funds? And will the criteria and conditions for the loans be significantly different from those of the current IFIs [international financial institutions]?

Nonetheless, the BRICS bank is expected to be to be different and better. “The lending terms would be more realistic and attuned to the realities of the developing countries that require the funds,” Khor noted optimistically.

The five countries also agreed to use their own currencies when trading among themselves, effetively reducing their dependence on the US dollar as the main currency of trade.

Many businesses in the five countries are already doing that, “but now their heads of states have made it clear that they are open to receiving payments in their own currencies. By putting their stamp of approval, the BRICS leaders made the point that they are not happy with the global reserve system,” Khor pointed out.

Commenting at the outcome of the summit, French daily Le Figaro said on March 30 that “little by little, the BRICS are asserting themselves”.

Khor agreed: “Technical meetings between the ministries of these countries are held throughout the year, and not just confined to a once-a-year symbolic meeting. Add to that the practical steps taken at the highly visible recent summit and one can say that BRICS is here to stay.”

A multi-polar world is finally upon us.

(03 February 2012) — Even as the gods of the literary world descended upon the Jaipur Literature Festival 2012 (JLF12) last week, it was The Satanic Verses that continued to bedevil organizers 24 years after its publication and cast a pall over the prestigious event.

Salman Rushdie, the author of the controversial novel which many Muslims deem offensive to Islam, had initially been invited but was forced to stay away after extremist groups threatened violence even at the mere mention of his name. Four writers who defiantly read passages from the banned book on stage were disengaged by the organisers. And a video address from London by Rushdie planned for the last day of the festival was eventually cancelled after local police warned that the city could descend into violence if it proceeded.

The decision by the organisers, who described the five-day festival as the ‘mahakumbh of the word‘ — a metaphor for the confluence of ideas and expression — was derided by many as a capitulation to bigots.

It also left those participating in the festival questioning the very idea of banning something.

“You can ban a book if it is not appropriate for the society, but how can you ban the author of the book?” questioned Javed Akhtar, one of India’s most popular lyricists.

But beyond the controversy, the festival meant to “celebrate excellence in Indian and international writing” was by far the largest since the annual event began on a tentative note in 2006. This year’s eclectic crowd of over 122,000 were introduced to literary giants and celebrated intellectuals like Tom Stoppard, Ben Okri, Michael Ondaatje, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker — a far cry from its inaugural edition five years ago in a hall with a handful of attendees and 16 authors. The following year saw an improved turnout including Rushdie, which in light of this year’s scandal, seems ironic.

But the festival’s major turnaround came in 2008, when organisers, the Jaipur Virasat Foundation, appointed a professional event management firm to oversee it. The results were dramatic and immediate. That year brought in substantial sponsorship money and the participation of close to 80 authors. Author Miranda Seymour even anointed it “the grandest literary festival of them all” in The Mail.

It never looked back after that.

The sheer logistics of the present edition, which took 18 months of planning and had to undergo last minute changes for security reasons, were revelatory. In addition to the massive audience, 250 authors and around 2,500 delegates from across the world formed a special invitees list.

“Apart from dealing with issues related to authors, administration, visitors, 600 accredited media personnel from across the globe and 300 freelancers, there were times when meetings with the police and intelligence officials went on till 3 am, with the single objective of ensuring everyone’s security,” said Sanjoy K Roy, producer of the festival.

All that hard work showed, as the festival dubbed as “the greatest literary show on earth” by Newsweek editor Tina Brown provided glowing moments when poetry intersected with polemics, science sparred with spirituality, rationalists shared space with mystics and freedom of speech challenged the self-serving ideas of politics and bigotry.

Encouragingly for the literary world, the sessions were supported by as many as 24 corporate giants, including Google, Bank of America and India’s Tata Steel.

Giving a great boost to the festival and indeed to authors, the two bookstores at Diggi Palace, the mainstay venue of the festival, sold US$120,000 worth of books over the five days.
All of that ensured that the most important guests of the festival — the authors — were left impressed by the experience.

“I feel so happy here. The Indians are so open to the beauty of words,” Argentinian writer Pola Oxoriac said at the festival.

Kamin Mohammadi, London-based Iranian writer and journalist, echoed the Argentine’s words. “It’s an absolutely unique, spectacular show. It’s amazing how literature can connect with people,” he said.

On the flipside, with the festival’s burgeoning growth, some veterans of the (still very new) festival complained that it was losing its original spirit and intimate charm, where chance encounters and conversations with giants of the literary world were the order of the day. They believed that was getting drowned in the sea of attendees at the festival.

And with authors like Umberto Eco, Ariel Dorfman, Michael Palin, Elizabeth Gilbert, Noam Chomsky, Philip Pullman, Bill Bryson, Monica Ali and Jhumpa Lahiri slated to attend the festival next year, the festival promises to only grow bigger.

While this year’s Rushdie controversy may have brought embarrassment to the organisers and blemished international perceptions of Indian literary attitudes, the fracas may well serve to strengthen the festival’s brand before its next chapter is written a year from now.

Hell Knows No Fury…

On January 24 2012, the last day of the festival, a large number of Muslim activists appeared at the venue and proceeded to the back of the lawns where a huge crowd had gathered to hear the video address by Salman Rushdie, the author of the controversial novel, The Satanic Verses, which many Muslims deem offensive to their religion. According to some reports, the cleric in charge told his followers that if anyone was killed that day they would die a martyr.

English newspaper The Times of India reported one activist saying that “rivers of blood will flow here if they show Rushdie”, while the Muslim Manch representative Abdul Salim Sankhla was quoted as saying: “We will not allow Rushdie to speak here in any form. There will be violent protests if he speaks.”

At the same time, some of the other activists were asking school children to get out of their seats and intimidating festival guests with threats of violence if they showed support for Rushdie’s video address.

Five minutes before the start of Rushdie’s video talk from London, the organisers of the festival were called to the security control room by the Jaipur commissioner of police. The organisers were told that “there would be violence in the venue and worse outside” if they didn’t call off the video address. The commissioner did not rule out the probability of police having to resort to shooting violent agitators.

The video address was later cancelled. Rushdie reacted via Twitter, saying, “Threat of violence by Muslim groups stifled free speech today. In a true democracy all get to speak, not just the ones making threats.”

Other Notable Authors in Attendance

Michael Ondaatje | Booker Prize-winning writer of ‘The English Patient’
Ben Okri | Nigerian novelist whose ‘The Famished Road’ won the Booker prize
Richard Dawkins | Oxford geneticist and anti-religion polemicist
Amy Chua | Yale law professor and the world’s leading ‘Tiger Mom’
Steven Pinker | Harvard psychologist and prominent intellectual
Tom Stoppard | British playwright, humourist and advocate of dissidence
Jamaica Kincaid | Caribbean whose works are noted for their semi-autobiographical style
Joseph Lelyveld | Ex-journalist famous for a controversial book on Gandhi and his love life

(13 January 2012) — As the US starts to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, global security analysts are voicing fears that the exit would mark the return of a global terrorism infrastructure in the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

“It is only a matter of time before the Taliban returns to rule Afghanistan. The big question is whether it has learnt its lesson during the last decade of war with the US, and is willing to give up its links with terrorist groups like Al Qaeda,” Dr D. Suba Chandran, director at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), a New Delhi-based centre for peace and security studies in South Asia, told Asia360 News.

“Doubts persist about that because the Taliban refused to snap the links even after the 9/11 attack, which led to the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 in the first place,” Dr Chandran said.

The US withdrew 10,000 troops from Afghanistan before an end-2011 deadline set by US President Barack Obama. This was the first step in the planned pull-out of combat forces that involves the recalling of a further 23,000 US troops in the summer of 2012 and a complete exit by the end of 2014.

Under the strategy, which aims to continue a long, slow war to convince the Taliban that they cannot win, US advisers would be attached to Afghan combat units to provide them military intelligence and to call on US backup forces when needed.

However, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s troops not expected to win the war against the Taliban, the country could be thrown back to the 1990s, when the violently-enforced Islamised Taliban rule turned it into a breeding ground for terrorists across the globe.

“Unless a legitimate political solution is put into place, Afghanistan will spiral into a full blown civil war between the Pashtun [the tribe to which the Taliban belongs] dominated south and the Tajik and Uzbek minority factions in the north,” Michael Hughes, an Afghanistan observer, pointed out.

The US military withdrawal would allow intensified fighting and spark a race between Pakistan and India to step in.

Pakistan would try and ‘install’ a friendly regime in Afghanistan, even if it means backing the Taliban. India, Afghanistan’s biggest regional aid donor with US$1.3 billion worth of current projects from construction of the parliament building to highways, fears that the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan could expose it to a hostile, Islamist militant-infested neighbourhood.

India’s fears are further raised by the prospect of the reduced space that the US would be left with to carry out its strikes against terrorist safe havens in Pakistan. Once out of the firing range of US drones and helicopters, terrorists who converge in this volatile Afghanistan-Pakistan border region can easily carry out their mission of mayhem in South Asia.

As it were, Pakistan’s relations with the US have soured after a NATO bombing accidentally killed 24 Pakistani troops on November 26. Since then, the US has halted drone strikes from its base in Pakistan, allowing the resurgence of Al Qaeda and other extremist groups.

Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf told CNN on November 9, 2011, that the period after the withdrawal of US troops would be a very difficult one for the region. “I get a feeling that maybe we will revert to the regional instability that preceded the 2001 US-led invasion”, he said.

But it is not just India and Pakistan that may be affected by the US military withdrawal. China will be keeping a close eye on the situation too as it continues to battle Islamist separatists in the restive Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which are said to receive arms training in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Terrorist elements that form the sleeper cells in much of the rest of the world also trace their roots back to Afghanistan.

In the absence of US and NATO troops and with more than a third of its people unemployed and living below the poverty line, a fragile and turbulent Afghanistan may prove to be a security hazard for its immediate neighbours and beyond.

(9 December 2011) — Myanmar got its clearest invitation to return to the global community when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the country on November 30 to support “a movement for change”.

The country’s first visit by an American state secretary in 50 years followed a series of extraodinary moves by the military-backed government that included talks with

Aung San Suu Kyi, who led her party to a landslide elections victory in 1990, shortly before the military junta seized power.

The reform-minded moves also included bringing in a law that gives workers the right to strike, and releasing more than 200 political prisoners.

On November 25, Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy applied to re-register as a political party, paving the way for the icon for democracy to stand in the by-elections early next year.

Myanmar, in its campaign to re-engage with the world, has come a long way from the enforcement of martial law in 1988 in response to demonstrations calling for an end to military rule.

At the time, the military regime formed the State Law and Order Restoration Council and ordered multi-party elections, which saw Suu Kyi’s party win 392 out of the 485 parliamentary seats in May 1990 — despite her being under house arrest.

However, in June 1990, council chief Saw Maung ruled out an immediate power transfer, saying that a new constitution was needed first. The following month, the council issued declaration 1/90, empowering the elected representatives with “the responsibility to draw up the constitution of the future democratic state”.

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy objected to this as the legislature had been elected to form a national government, and not to be a constituent assembly. In response, the military regime started to arrest political party leaders for refusing to comply with 1/90.

In March 2010, however, the first whiff of reform arrived in Myanmar.

After two decades of absolute military rule, a 17-member election commission was named to oversee fresh polls, in a move that was greeted with scepticism by the rest of the world.

The commission was headed by a former military officer described as a hard-liner and came with new laws that prohibited those with criminal convictions or who are members of religious orders from belonging to a political party.

This effectively disqualified from elections jailed political activists, including many National League for Democracy leaders, as well as Buddhist monks who led the anti-government protests in 2007.

Suu Kyi, who had spent most of the last two decades under detention, was released on November 13, 2010, six days after the elections.

Her party, the National League for Democracy, boycotted the elections because the electoral rules would have forced it to expel its imprisoned party members.

The elections brought to power a nominally civilian government dominated by the army and its proxies. Amid allegations of widespread fraud by opposition groups, the military leadership said the elections stood for Myanmar’s transition from military rule to a civilian democracy.

More signs of reforms came in January this year, as the government authorised Internet connection for Suu Kyi, a major tool for her to garner international support.

In March, Senior General Than Shwe, who was chairman of the State Peace and Development Council, formerly the State Law and Order Restoration Council, resigned as head of state in favour of his trusted lieutenant Thein Sein.

Under President Thein Sein, the pace of reforms speeded up. The government released more political prisoners, eased media censorship and stopped coercing armed ethnic groups to join the nation’s Border Guard Force.

Myanmar also legalised labour unions, freed the Internet of government censorship and began a programme to revamp the banking system, leading to the arrival of automated teller machines in some banks this year.

In September, the government suspended a China-backed dam project in northern Kachin state to “respect the will of the people” — a rare concession to public pressure that surprised analysts in the west, as well as China, Myanmar’s strongest ally during its international isolation.

In November, just four years after the bloody putdown of protests by Buddhist monks, Myanmar’s parliament approved a law that guarantees the right to protest, albeit with conditions. Protests remain prohibited at factories, hospitals and government offices, and permission to protest must be sought five days earlier, with details of slogans and speakers provided. Staging a protest without permission carries a penalty of one year in prison.

No reason has been given for the regime’s sudden change of heart.

President Thein Sein himself was a member of the military junta and recently maintained at a press conference that “there are no political prisoners; all those who are in jail have broken the law”.

His comment sparked fears that Myanmar’s reforms were a cosmetic exercise designed to win global support.

“There is some risk that they may not continue to change,” Aung Din, a former political prisoner who now leads the US Campaign for Burma advocacy group, told Reuters.

Even Suu Kyi said it was too early to reward the regime for a job half done. “I haven’t changed my mind on sanctions,” she told Associated Press on November 30.

In the US, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Clinton continue to emphasise that Myanmar’s leaders must do more to reform, release more political prisoners and end long-running conflicts in ethnic-minority areas.

“One of the reasons that I’m going is to test what the true intentions are and whether there is a commitment to both economic and political reform,” Clinton told CNN on the eve of her Myanmar visit.

It is too early to draw any conclusions about the reforms in Myanmar. However even government officials note that they are in line with the political winds of change sweeping across the world.

“The president was convinced about the global situation; he saw where the global stream was heading,” U Nay Zin Latt, adviser to President Thein Sein, told the New York Times, alluding to people’s movements like the Arab Spring, which is posing a challenge to authoritarian regimes in the Middle East.

The world now waits to see where Myanmar is heading.