 I promise I will be brief, but this is the dreaded word from your sponsor. My name is Stephen King, and I'm delighted to work with you here on behalf of a media network, and it's really a great pleasure to work with you to this very timely event on the future prospects for Myanmar. We're delighted to be supporting this event at a time when the country is undergoing such a rapid transformation, an unprecedented transformation. If I may, I want to just say a few words of explanation about who a media network is for those of you who don't know us. We're a philanthropic investment foundation, which was set up by Pierre Amidiar, who is the founder of eBay. Our approach to philanthropy is actually quite different from the normal traditional philanthropies. We're both a venture capital fund, and we're also a philanthropic foundation. That allows us to make equity investments in companies that will have a social impact, at the same time make grants across five initiative areas, and these are governance and citizen engagement, the ability for people to hold their government's accounts to account and to get more information about how governments are run. Given our eBay heritage, we're interested in the way in which technology can transform societies and which it can provide people with access to information and which it can also generate social change. We support initiatives in financial inclusion from mobile money to microfinance and giving people access to funding. We support educational systems in underdeveloped communities, and of particular relevance today in Myanmar, we also look for ways to help make it possible for people to secure and hold on to their land and their property rights as well. We've just started making grants in Myanmar over the last three years, and from the outset we've been astonished by the rapid adoption of technology in the country. This nascent tech sector that we're starting to see emerging Yangon has huge opportunities not only to drive economic growth and create jobs, but also as other drivers of opportunity for transparency and accountability, for access to information, for education and so on. It's clear there's no baby steps in this technological transformation in Myanmar. We've come from naught to 100 miles an hour in about three years. I remember first visiting the country a couple of years ago when it cost $2,500 to buy a SIM card, and now you have 80% of the population have access to smartphones, $23 smartphones from China. So this huge pent-up demand is something which we're very interested in encouraging, that entrepreneurial demand which we see every day in Yangon and throughout the country. We've supported an entity called Pandia which is a technology, an innovation hub which is in downtown Yangon and is a meeting place for technologists, for civil society organisations and others who want to look at ways in which technology can transform the country. But just in case I'm going to be accused of shiny-eyed Silicon Valley enthusiasm, I also want to say that we do support other activities as well, and that's part of the story of development in Myanmar. Obviously there's education, there's land and property rights, there's financial inclusion, there's access to finance which were equally important for us. And we work with organisations that provide people with information and tools that can engage with government, that can hold their government to account. Organisations like the Open Myanmar Initiative which is tracking the activities and policies of the new parliamentarians, organisations like the Yangon Journalism School which is training independent investigative journalists throughout the country. And we are particularly pleased to support Global Witness last year with their groundbreaking Jade report which looked at the way in which Jade is the source of much corruption in the country and much of the resources from Jade are not going into the national budget. So it's clear that the road ahead for Myanmar will not be an easy one and the incoming government is going to be weighed down by expectations for rapid change which will be very difficult to deliver. Being able to analyse the future challenges for the government and bring the necessary intellectual rigor to this task is the work of experts such as we have here tonight on the panel. So before I hand over to Professor Justin Watkins, I'd like to thank Sirius for having organised such an impressive event and we look forward to the debate. Thank you. Right, well thank you very much Stephen and the first thanks goes to you who put under pressure in one of your Burmese lessons, was asked whether there was something you'd be interested in funding and I'm very pleased that the answer was yes. You weren't going to be allowed out of the room if you'd said no. But thanks also to a media network, Jim Peacock and Greg Persial who have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes. While I'm saying thank you, thanks in particular to Jane Savory and the centres and programmes office here at SOAS. A lot of work has gone on behind the scenes and to the technicians and the people operating the cameras around. Thank you very much. I should say first of all on that subject that we are filming the event and your presence here implies that you give us your permission to film you. If anyone doesn't want to be filmed, I'm afraid you have to leave. But I hope that's all right. So just to make that clear, I think it's going to be a podcast and it'll be available on the internet. So if you don't want your face to be seen, you know what you can do. And secondly on the matter of technology we've got a hashtag, Burma in the 21st century and the hashtag is hashtag SOASMIAMAR. So if you are a Twitter you're very welcome to use that hashtag and who knows what might happen, I have no idea. But as Stephen said, tonight's discussion is going to be on the amazing changing situation in Myanmar following the elections last November. It's a pace of change which has been a very long time coming. As many of you will know, Burmese has been taught here at SOAS for 100 years and there was a time 15 or so, even 10 years ago, where none of us thought that anything would change for the better. But here we are, it looks as if things may be changing in some ways. We'll find out, we'll try to examine which ways in particular shortly. So I'm going to say very little more about SOAS except that we are struggling very hard to keep our expertise of Burmese alive and well at SOAS. And I hope we have the support from everyone in the audience to support the teaching of Burmese and the study of the country at SOAS to keep it going. And it's very wonderful to see that when we organise an event like this it is so well attended. You're very welcome to stay afterwards. There's a reception upstairs in what's called the Brunais Suite. So please come and talk and share your thoughts about the evening's events. And the format of the evening is largely based on the BBC Question Time format. There are questions which are going to appear, questions which have been submitted by people who registered for the event. And we hope that in many cases you'll be here. You'll be invited to read your question when it appears on the screen. So if you can wait a second for the microphone to be handed to you and the camera to focus in on your face so that you can read your question, put it to the panel. And our Chairman will then invite the panel members to address the question and give you their thoughts. So let me first of all introduce the panel. At the far end is Dore Kim Ma Ma Di, who is the inaugural Dore Amsansuchi Gender Research Fellow at International Gender Studies at Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford. She's also a research associate in anthropology. She's a social anthropologist and she's the producer of an acclaimed documentary Dreams of Dutiful Daughters, which was produced in 2013. And previously, for many years, she taught at the Australian National University where we met when Burmese was being taught there for the very first time in 2003, which is where we met each other for the first time. Then, so not in any particular order, Zuneta Herbert, so in the centre of the table there, Zuneta Herbert has been involved in human rights and development in Myanmar for more than 25 years. She lived in Mandalay during and after the 1988 pro-democracy uprising. She's advised governments and UN bodies, academics and international NGOs and has written discussion papers on numerous international conferences. She's worked for Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and was an interpreter for the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights prior to joining Partners Asia in 2008, which is where she now is a senior adviser. She has long and diverse experience and is also an alumna of SOAS. I'm pleased to note. Next, we come to Dr Lee Jones, a co-author between Zuneta and Mamma. Lee Jones is a senior lecturer in international politics at Queen Mary University of London and has written extensively on Myanmar, including in his books ASEAN, Sovereignty and Intervention in Southeast Asia. Societies under siege exploring how international economic sanctions do not work and co-authored governing borderless threats to traditional security and the politics of state transformation. So there's some real political science book titles for you. Fantastic. And then, last on our panel is Uso Yntan, also known to the BBC's Burmese audiences by his broadcast name, Myntet. He is the desk editor with the BBC Burmese Service in London. Uso Yntan joined the BBC in 2001 as a producer and became a desk editor in 2007. He's part of the dedicated team of journalists at BBC Burmese whose reporting has won over the years numerous international awards such as Wreith Awards and AIB Awards. He regularly appears on BBC TV and radio programmes making sense of the complex Myanmar politics to international audiences. He occasionally travels to Myanmar to report on the country's political developments, including all three recent elections. We're very pleased to have someone from the BBC here. Knowledge is unsurpassed. Finally, our chairman, my colleague Dr Michael Bueller, who is lecturer in comparative politics in the Department of Politics and International Studies here at SOAS. I'm delighted that he agreed to chair this evening's session. He's been teaching for three hours this afternoon and ran from the classroom to do another several hours of talking. So hopefully he will be good at diverting talk to our panellists who are the people we want to hear from. So thank you very much. All right. Good evening and welcome. I'm actually going to say as little as possible because I just talked for the last three hours, just in pointed out. He also told me that my main job would actually be to tell people when it's time for the reception at 7.45. This is exactly what I'm going to do. But in between then and now I'm going to moderate this talk. Now the way we thought we would organise this is that I would like every panellist to maybe say something about what they perceive as the main challenges that Burma is facing over the next 12 to 24 months probably and after that we'll have a look at the questions that you submitted by email. If we still have time, we probably also then open up the floor for some questions from the audience, but maybe we'll start with you. So what do you see as some of the most burning kind of issues that the government and the opposition also have to address? Thank you. Thank you for having me on the panel and thank you for your interest coming here. This is an exciting time. It's a juncture important juncture in Myanmar's history. Transition is taking place and people have very, very high hopes and expectations. I travelled to Myanmar just before the elections and travelled across the country and met a lot of people. All of them unanimously said that they wanted to end that current system at the time and they wanted change. Change is and has been the buzzword in the country until now. So they wanted change. That's why when the election came, they came out in a large number and they voted in the government they wanted to see and they voted out the government they wanted to end. That's why when the results are collated on the very evening of the election day, I was right in front of the NLD office and we were interviewing NLD officials. The results were trickling in and they all were surprised. They didn't expect the results to be that big a margin. So the margin was so big that even the NLD officials were quite surprised. Likewise, the ruling party, USDP, they were also in shell shock. They didn't expect the results to be that in disfavour of them. So at least they hoped that they would master a few seats, a number of seats in the parliament so that they could combine with the help of the 25% seats occupied by the military MPs. They could at least form a number to form a collision government, which was not to be. So that was really kind of big surprise for all the Myanmar watchers. I was talking to my fellow colleagues and then we had to admit that we were quite wrong in our predicting the results. But jubilation came with premonition. After the results were confirmed, then when we spoke to the people, they were a little bit felt anxious because there was an incident, precedence in 1990 elections when NLD won in a very large landslide. But the results were not recognised. The results were ignored by the military. The military came and seized power. So there was a sense of deja vu and people were quite anxious. Even to our son Suzy herself, we interviewed her maybe just after the election victory and she told the journalists to stay on because that was the important time, she said. Anything could happen right after the election. So we stay on for a week. Thankfully nothing drastic happened. People's premonition was evident when they thought that the military wouldn't willingly hand over power to the winning party. We have a weekly heavy assay programme. In one of the heavy assay programmes, we posed this question. Yes, transition is fine. Now the NLD has won the elections, they are going to take the power. But what about the transitional justice? What about the alleged atrocities, atrocious crimes committed by the previous military regime? Should we forget them? So we posed that question. The issue of emails and letters asking us not to proceed with this topic because they thought their reason was that that could put military, that could frighten the military and military could do something to take back their expectations. Their expectations would be dashed. So that was the kind of scenario that's happening. People were quite concerned, whether the military would willingly hand over the power or not. But now the transition, the time has come, the transition is taking place. In two days' time, the NLD will nominate the vice president and the election of the president next president. So the title says that the government taking shape. Yes, taking shape behind the scenes. We don't know who the NLD would nominate. We have some names, but nobody has been confirmed yet. NLD is one of the closely guarded, best closely guarded secrets in the NLD. The NLD is quite tight-lipped, so we don't know who would be there. But there are tricky issues. My other colleagues also will be talking about this constitutional issue, constitution as it stands, passed on to our constituency from becoming the president. So in the past few weeks, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi tried to kind of get an agreement with the military to change or suspend that constitutional clause. But we understand that the negotiation did not bear any fruit. That's why in the initial months, then we won't see Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as the president. But she said if she cannot become the president, she would be above the president. We don't know how that shaped well because the constitution doesn't have any provision for that. But these are the issues, and the most important issue that NLD will have to do is the dealing with the military. And it depends on how successful Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD can negotiate. Then the country future depends very much on that. Thank you. Thank you. Suneta, do you share these views and assessment? Yes, I think that's absolutely the case. But I also... I mean, if we're talking about the difficulties facing Myanmar rather than the NLD government, I think that it's important to also remember how we got here and how actually this is part of a... I mean, the change is really about a kind of normalisation of a country that has always been rather extraordinary. And one of the things that I think is incredibly important in this movement is the role of civil society organisations, both in creating this moment, in the support of the National Leave for Democracy, but also in ensuring that come the next election in 2020, because we do now have a timetable for the next election, which in itself is somewhat miraculous actually. People can plan their lives in a way that has never been possible in Myanmar, and for me that is very miraculous. But the civil society organisations that have supported the NLD, have brought the NLD to power, are very concerned about the extent of, in a sense, the NLD victory. And there is a... If Myanmar is going to remain on a positive trajectory as a democratic country, then civil society has to work extremely hard to create peace, because you can't leave it to the top-down process, to create a sense of active citizens who are engaged in politics and want to hold their governments accountable, no matter who is in government. And this has to happen in the next few years, or it won't happen, is my view. And I think this is probably the biggest challenge for the country, is to make sure that the current euphoria, the current inflow of aid and assistance to the government actually also continues to create change at the grass-roots level. The challenges that the country face in terms of clearing up the mess that the military couldn't sort out, that the insane government couldn't sort out, particularly in terms of the ethnic nationalities and ethnic peace, particularly in terms of things like the midzone dam, for example, are going to be very, very difficult. And the civil society needs to be seen as a friend of the government and needs to be working in their own way to continue to build networks that work beyond the current existing structures, which is basically a military complex. And I think also, and this is probably slightly off the point for some people, but I do think that one of the big challenges for Myanmar going forward is going to be natural disasters. And this is something that not enough is ever really talked about, but already it's March now. Already there are large swathes of the country don't have enough water. The monsoon won't come until May. The environment is changing in Myanmar probably faster than in many countries in the world. And part of it is because of, you know, deforestation. Part of it is because of a rising population. There's many reasons for Myanmar's extreme vulnerability to natural disasters. And I suspect that this is going to be something that the government is going to have to face. And along with creating peace, I would say he's probably going to be two of the biggest challenges in the next five years. Thank you. I just want to attack the title of the event. At the very least, there should be a question mark. Shouldn't there all change at the top? Because of course it's not all change at the top. And this is a fundamental issue. There are two very senior people at the very top who are not leaving their jobs, and they are the military commander-in-chief and his deputy. And this signals the elements of continuity from the Onsen regime. And I think we have to remember how we got here. I agree with Zuneta on that. How did we get to this pass because of a military-led transition from military rule? So the NLD has come to power, yes, but within a constitutional system, within a political and economic system designed by and for the military. And so that creates very serious constraints on the government. Some of those constraints are constitutional, and some of them are more structural and informal. The constitutional constraints, we've already heard about the issue about the presidency. There will be principle agent problems to use a political science term because I am a political scientist. Sorry about that, Justin. She will have to try and control her proxy from afar. We don't know who that's going to be yet. That will not necessarily be easy because the executive is deliberately insulated by a particular and legislative control and accountability. The military continues to dominate key state agencies. It is the commander-in-chief that commands the army, not the president. And he has soul control over all military affairs and soul command over all the coercive approaches of the state, including the police. The commander-in-chief appoints the ministers of home affairs, defence and border affairs. That gives the military control of various ways of public policy, some of the most important, particularly as regards the peace process in relations with Myanmar's ethnic minorities. The CNC also appoints five of the 11 members of the National Defence and Security Council, which kind of floats above and super intends the business of government. So the army is still Myanmar's most coherent, powerful institution. The state is extremely weak and ramshackle in terms of its civilian wing. Any attempts to cut the military's budget will be severely resisted on grounds of security and sovereignty and the military can source a lot of its income off budget anyway. 80% of senior civil servants in the country are former military officials. Of course, the military controls 25% of parliamentary seats, which gives it a de facto veto over any constitutional change and thereby over any serious political reform, including a meaningful settlement with the ethnic minority ceasefire groups. Then there are a range of non-constitutional constraints on the government. The political complexes in Myanmar's borderlands, the realities in those areas is not the state that rules, it is potentially quite fragile packed between local military officials, local civilian officials and ceasefire elites and they are often fragile, they are still fighting in many areas and there is a risk from the ethnic minority perspective of the return of what under British colonialism was called Diarchy where you had the state basically controlling the centre and we may see liberalisation to some extent in the Bama dominated central areas of Myanmar and continued authoritarian rule in the borderlands through local elites. The corruption of course remains endemic, Aung San Suu Chee has this mantra of the rule of law. The rule of law is not a magic wand, it is also very difficult to bring about in a country where 70% of the judges are estimated to take bribes. Communal tensions remain very deep and very severe. Islamophobia has not gone away, the Mabata, the right wing nationalist, anti-Muslim extremist, Buddhist monks, they are still around and they have already thrown down the gauntlet to the new government and this is a really serious issue. The continued economic dominance of crony capitalists who were essentially brought into being by the previous military regime, there is no way that they can be simply expropriated, their capital, their expertise is going to be needed and that will constrain the amount of economic reform that can be brought in. Finally, the NLD itself is a weak party. It is still very little more than a personal vehicle for Aung San Suu Chee and I think she realises that a great deal of reform and party building is going to be necessary over the next five years. It does have an authoritarian cast. I think its relationship with civil society is often a very tenuous one where anybody that tries to play a role that may seem to infringe on NLD territory is given short shrift by some of the rather ancient individuals who dominate the party. So, as has already been said there are huge expectations on the new government but there are very severe constraints on what it will be able to achieve in practice. You've mentioned many issues that we'll come back to when we look at the questions that people have submitted but if you could maybe just tell us quickly what you think are the priorities for the government and the challenges? I know a time is here but I cannot let the opportunity pass without my tribute to the special role of Suwaz in Burmese studies. Suwaz has long committed Burmese studies by two most talented Burmese language teachers that influence on the world and I think its like Suwaz realised how lucky they are to have such excellent teachers and to keep Burmese studies here alive. And today is also International Women's Day so it is really for me that it is really appropriate to talk about women issues that matter most in Burma. So, if things are normal I would today say that today the first time International Women's Day is held in Burma under the newly elected democratic government that the president of Aung San Suu Chee but things are not so simple and straight forward in Burma. So, and we all know that she is still facing for her struggle to be a president. And we also know that and how military reserved themselves with 25% of seat both upper and lower house and the presidency for those with a military vision and despite all that Aung San Suu Chee managed to bring many educated and passionate academic and activists to the parliament. This is the first time ever in the history of Burmese parliament women where many female MPs were in the parliament and in Burma there were 51 4 million people women comprised more than half accounting 26.5 so more than 1.7 million than men. In this illustration 800 out of 6074 elected parliamentarians are women making up for 10% so the number of female representatives increased in general suddenly the energy itself produced the female representative in their party from their own accord of 30% in 2015 to now 13%. But anyways Burma managed to lift themselves above the position of being the least female representatives number in the region. Still 87% of Burmese parliamentarians are overwhelmingly men and dominated the parliament. And then they also did not put forward a greater number of female candidates which could have significantly lift and boost female representation in the parliament. There are many barriers barriers and challenges in political representation and I want to one focus on pro-law militarisation, influence and create militarised culture that we have hardly talked about. And as Cynthia Anul said to become militarised is to adopt militarised militarised militarised values. And military ideologies are accepted as a normal in real life. So this lead to particular form of cultural change. In Burma, what kind of struggle and barriers women face? Structure and nature number one is culture, religion. One of the most important factor of justification of male dominance and male superiority over women is porn. Porn is fundamental difference between men and women. Men are considered being born with porn on their right shoulders. Women are considered spiritually lower because they are born without it. So in other words, men alone can have porn. Men alone become pony monks and are naturally secure one of the two most powerful and higher social orders within the male domains in monastic education, monastic institution. The concept just defines and accept superiority of male roles such as in politics, such as in peace talk. This is the precisely reason that women are so hard to compete with the male dominated area. But also pro-law militarisation also legitimate their male dominated role. For Xima, this is the same exact reasons that 2008 constitution which guarantee equal opportunities of women as decorative. Because the constitution refer that the position that are suitable for men only and also the presidents must have military vision. Another religious order that we have talked about Mabata. It is like a kind of this is a Mabata, the organisation extreme nationalist religious authority that hijack a rate of Rakhine women in Rakhine state and succeeded to bust the female women special marriage law. So this law will impact on women in everyday life. For Xima the new population control bill which criminalised women for having sharing less than three years apart. Why under this current panicote, marital rape is legal in Burma unless the wife is 14 years old or younger. This means that the wife has little or no control over her own body or her husband's sexual drive. The husband can use violence legitimately if she do not complain. Pregnancy may not be her choice but they are solely responsible for their reproductive health. Abortion is criminalised. In such environment, women may displayly seek unlawful or unsafe abortion. Similarly, it is really interesting that in education centres so far. But what happened with women in the education centre where they dominated the position? If we look at the trend of the women, women are number in education maybe we'll come back to some of these issues. So that is like this is how many female writers in Burma zero until last year. I think you've raised many important points but we'll come back to them throughout the evening. I think I would try to give now the audience a chance to actually answer or pose a few questions and we'll come back to a lot of the points that you've mentioned. We've received a lot of submissions and questions and I've tried to find a direction that is representative of the submissions we've received and I would like to start with questions that pertain to the broader kind of political challenges that Burma is facing and so we have received a question from Nola Werwag from Amnesty International UK. I don't know if you're here. Nope. So she basically was interested and Lee mentioned this already and Suneta also that basically there is a need now for the normalisation of politics in Burma but the question of course is to what extent that is actually possible given the residual powers that the military actually has and so the question that she asked is how much potential for change is there for the new government if the military holds a quarter of seats and important ministries. The second kind of related question that she submitted and many other people had an interest in as well is seems to have a bit of an authoritarian streak she eventually said that she will rule above the president or be above the president and so the question that Nola asked here is also is she actually true, is she quite authoritarian and if so how will it actually affect the new government maybe Suneta you could start probably about two minutes or so and then we'll go over to Lee. On the first part as Lee has said it is very important that the military still have 25% of the seats and they will do for a long time and it will very much constrain what the NLD government can do however there are particularly in the area of the rule of law in fact there are some areas like for example the supreme court the supreme court currently has seven members four of whom are military judges three of whom are civilian but it can actually have ten members under the constitution so it would be very easy for the NLD to appoint some new members of the supreme court who could be actually experienced lawyers which would make a change and they actually have quite a lot of power as the supreme court and they could start or restart a common law system in Myanmar and actually publishing the reports of records of judicial hearings to actually interpret the law as it is supposed to be interpreted I mean one of the big reasons why the legal system is so corrupt is because of the very deliberate misuse of existing criminal procedure codes and this doesn't require new laws, it doesn't require the time that it's going to take to do that so there are I mean that's one small example so there is quite a lot that can be done even with the 25% I mean nobody thought that the same government was go as far as they went to face it, we all expected that would be a military controlled government that wasn't going to make any changes, they did the military are aware of their new interests and have different ways of being they've got all of the military MPs are actually extremely well educated, very smart, very clever guys but they are willing to compromise it's been shown, the question is how far will the NLD be able to push them on things that really matter to a long-term democratic development of the country and as for Ong Sen Sujee's authoritarianism well I personally am not going to comment on that but there is certainly an anxiety among civil society for example that that the NLD or rather Ong Sen Sujee will try to capture civil society space by insisting that foreign donors only work through certain organisations by the creation of more gongos the Dorkinji Foundation will inevitably and I'm sure this is going to happen play a much bigger role in the country, we will see Dorkinji Foundation becoming the donor of the NGO Gongo of Choice effectively and that is a concern but at the same time look at the make-up of the MPs 13 of the MPs that were elected were part of the EITI the Extractive Industries Alliance so they've been trained they know about extractive industries all of their friends are from CSOs over 70 of the MPs are former political prisoners who since their release have worked with CSOs have fought for rights these are not people that are going to sit back and say oh sorry ma'am they may to begin with and there will be a honeymoon period where we'll wait and see and the CSOs externally from the NLD are also going to I'm sure allow for the NLD to make their move, see how far they go but it's not going to be possible for one person to run a country it's a big country Now Lee you've been a lot more pessimistic now do you have something to say with regard to the residual powers if we look at other transitions in Southeast Asia very often after a few years the military has actually been willing to give these residual powers up now how do you see the situation in Burma? So I think the way to understand the way that things will play out is to understand that what the military regime was doing for 20 years was to try and design the constitutional system which is the one we've got now they tried to impose it once in the 90s it didn't work and then they imposed it in 2010 and it did work and so what you essentially have is a system where the military holds the ring and there are certain red lines now there is space within those red lines for the government to have a considerable amount of autonomy and I think the fact that the NLD was able to win so big and the military didn't step in shows that they have some considerable faith in this constitutional settlement that civilians won't muck it up which is the way that the military constantly looks at civilians that they are a threat to the stability and the integrity of the country so the key thing for them are those things well they understood as the national causes sovereignty, territorial integrity so relations with the ethnic minorities are a crucial area for the military and there's going to be limited wiggle room but in other areas for example economic and social policy there could be space for considerably more policy autonomy so that's the way to think about it I think is that different areas have got more or less wiggle room depending on where the military have drawn these lines as for Aung San Suu Chui authoritarian is not the word I would use patrician maybe would be more more accurate I mean I do think it's problematic when who is actually going to be president of the country is some kind of state secret that there's no democratic participation in discussing that whatsoever and just today the number of people who are able to speak on behalf of the NLD was increased by 100% 2 now there's her and there's one other person that's highly problematic if we think that the purpose of a party is to aggregate interests and to be a space for democratic development I think she's by no means a stupid woman she understands that she needs to develop the party and she I think will appoint certain individuals to take that forward she knows that she will have to delegate both matters and in party matters if she doesn't then the system will simply grind to a halt and you'll get the same as we've always had in Myanmar where people are afraid at local level of using their autonomy taking decisions being held accountable all the decisions get funneled upwards and so this is one a few people at the top taking decisions in the whole system grinds to a halt that is possible because there are years and years where that is exactly what people do to avoid having to take any responsibility and get caught making any errors so that's something she's going to have to fight against her own instincts maybe which is to centralise and the instincts of everybody else I think it will be a tough road actually what do you make of the quote that she said she'll be above the president I think it is even though it is kind of illogical and yet she is the one who will make a difference who will change so like she will be doing that she will be doing that but international community they go to Burma they want to see her they want to talk to her not the other person but another problem is we are talking about Aung San Suu Chee being authoritarian and we forgot about lack of critical skills that people have and she has to work with them so like in first step she is actually changing very closely and she will not make any concession for anyone so maybe she is ruling the party like dictatorship style but at the same time we can see for the first time that she become very strategic politicians and more transformed from starving activists to become like a strategic politician how she actually shuffled the hard party newly elected party members and she is going to bring in ethnic party and USDP and put it on together second one is like she is really focusing on empowerment of party members now today like SPS speaking in Burma her party members are sitting English exam and they will be studying English accordingly so there is like a lot of empowerment plans are at the moment she is working on her party's members as a dictatorship style and I think she will change her leadership style and very soon ok, thank you now what do you make of the residual powers that the military has and as Lee pointed out basically they have set up a constitution that they have been working on for the last 25 plus years and give them enormous powers do you think there is any room for meaningful change in Burma? and people talk about the taking away of like 25% that's untouchable the red line for the military at the moment that's why I agree with Lee that because they didn't disrupt this transition process because military to some degree has confidence that until and unless that constitution current 2008 constitution is there they have certain kind of dominance in the country's politics 25% they put it in and the argument from the military side when we ask them why do you think you need to have that 25% members in the parliament is that because we didn't want to stage another coup we want to have some say because so that when the MP military has a very kind of entrenched or intrinsic mistrust of the politicians so they don't want to let go off that they don't want to see them the parliament occupied only by the democratically elected MPs so they put the 25% member in the parliament so when the key decisions are made then they will have their own say they don't want to let go of their say in that parliament but in the previous parliament sessions then we found the military MPs they did not always kind of object to some of the the proposals made by the NLD or other like ruling party but what they are still kind of keeping to themselves is that when there are key decisions like changing of the constitution changing of the qualifications for the president and stuff that could not get passed without their approvers they want to have that say but more importantly that like Lee mentioned that this is in the parliament but outside of the parliament the CNC commander in chief controls three key ministries most important thing is the home ministry home ministry controls the police and more importantly home ministry controls the general administration department you know up to the township level all the the officiating officers who managing administrative affairs are the military appointed person so they have set it up the system that's why the kind of people are quite surprised why did the military let go of in 2010 elections then let go of their power easily because they already set up the system the constitution guarantees their continued dominance in the country's politics so as long as the constitution is there they are kind of the only thing ok thank you now what we haven't really talked about yet is maybe what leverage the international community has in terms of pushing for change in Myanmar and so which brings us to the second question which Nick has submitted are you here yeah so I was advised yeah so there's a microphone the camera is moving in your direction so we're ready what does the panel think will help push the military into meaningful constitutional reform both from within Burma and outside given that the outside world has pretty much given away all of their bargaining chips in the naive or cynical anticipation of future reform so the assumption is that sanctions have made a difference so now that this is no longer there or as pronounced as it used to be do we actually see now an international community that is unable to react if we see change unfold in ways that they did not expect maybe we'll start with you I think it's a one of the thing is that empowerment to the military because this is the time that it came more than ever to work with the military and under all circumstances it has been working so hard to negotiate with the military not only that we must also remember that the military also being confined with their own institution and their own way of knowledge transferring so it's really important that military also empower and learn what kind of professional military that they want to establish and in recent weeks we've seen in the parliament one of the thing is that energy is inviting overseas experts and to train in them and including the military I think this is a good thing another thing that is outside international communities we need to work with the military so we need to make sure that they are proudly depicting from the politics so their their professional ego has been hot so like we need to make sure that working together with the military more than ever and to make them understand professionalism in military and also depart from their politic in their own pace Now Lee Euron, IR scholar have sanctions made a difference and now that this is no longer there do we now see maybe change? Yes, sanctions did make a difference in Myanmar they delayed the country's democratisation and I mean that sincerely my view is that they are entirely counterproductive and they prolonged a stalemate between the two sides and actually made it harder for the military to impose their constitution because they did create difficulties for the regime there's no doubt about that the reason we've got to this situation is because of a military-led process they were not forced from power they are proudly retreating from power thinking that actually they've been successful Now from that perspective there is nothing that the outside world can do to force them into meaningful constitutional change they laboured for 25 years and they were perfectly willing to accept all of the costs attendant on that for themselves, for their people they didn't like it but they endured it and they've been fighting for many more decades to keep the country together and from their perspective this is their role, this is their function they are the saviours of the nation the guardians of the nation state and the country's territorial integrity the constitutional settlement is required from their perspective to safeguard the national goals to safeguard the country's territorial integrity and to do it for now in the long term I think the military will gradually step back from the political arena but we're talking long term here they won't do it until they're satisfied that a civilian government can govern in a way that the military thinks a civilian government should govern the outside world never had any bargaining chips really but what few it had it threw away with sanctions it doesn't really have any now I think what the outside world needs to do is to take a lead from the democratically elected government of Myanmar which needs to take a very strategic approach to the reform of the state to try to maximise space within these red lines and donors need to be coordinated by the democratically elected government in support of key reform agendas some of them could be the ones that Marz just mentioned there may well be others in terms of better training for the police training for the military things like this but these will be relatively marginal things essentially this is a domestically driven process now many people also had questions about the situation with regard to ethnic minorities in in Burma so we had lots and lots of submissions with regard to that issue now the next question is from Rasmus Shoyt who is a consultant at development pathways and NGO here in London are you here no so he basically was interested in the opinion of the panelists with regard to the prospects of a genuine national ceasefire agreement I assume with ethnic minority groups happening in the near future is there a potential there for ceasefire agreements with the major kind of ethnic minority groups ok the previous government before they went out then they tried very hard to reach this nationwide ceasefire agreement because they wanted to to lay down as their legacy that they made peace with all ethnic ceasefire groups which was not to be and only they managed to make peace agreements with eight groups and most of them are smaller you know known fighting national ceasefire agreement that's why even just eight groups yeah that's why people are saying that it should not be called the nationwide ceasefire agreement it's only partial but some remaining groups they wanted to wait because you know what happened was that the previous government although they went out to the offer peace agreement with the ethnic then it's obvious it's quite evident that even the president would then say ask the military to stop you know fighting or offensive against the some ethnic groups then military acted in their own ways so yeah they went out and then they were kind of having wars fighting with the group so the ethnic groups were quite reluctant they didn't have much faith in the previous government whether they could really reach agreement because in the past the previous government idea was just lay down your arms first then we can talk so the ethnic groups they couldn't kind of they could not embrace that idea that's why there was some mistrust on going but all the remaining ethnic groups wanted to wait until the NLD government come to power and they started to make the Dawson Treaty also the NLD the incoming government set its top priority the reconciliation national reconciliation with the ethnic groups so when it comes to power there is a more kind of the positive feeling from the ethnic group site and then the much more possible Dawson Treaty also we heard that you know her role when what will be her role in the coming government we don't know yet but what we knew is that she already appointed herself that's not publicized yet but we heard from a very insight source that she appointed herself as the chief negotiator she herself will handle this negotiation deals with the ethnic group so that you know in her government time then because there could be the trust which was a very short currency with the previous government and there is a much more likely that the ceasefire and peace will happen in the NLD government's time I think that the question is wrong actually because it's not a ceasefire agreement that's needed in Myanmar and never has been I mean the Cachin had a ceasefire agreement that was successful there was no fighting for 17 years they had a ceasefire agreement and there was no discussion about a political settlement during that time the peace talks that have gone on under the Uthain saying government have been really about the process for a ceasefire agreement that might end up with some kind of process that might somewhere down the line have a political discussion and there is the what is needed is a political settlement not a ceasefire and I really I mean I think this is going to be enormously challenging for any government constrained as they are by the presence of the army for whom this is their territory and you know there are still 50,000 internally displaced people in Cachin state since the fighting broke out again in 2011 now today this week there is increased fighting in Sharn state between people who signed the NCA and people who didn't signed the NCA I mean this is going to be a really really major problem whether you know who can be trusted now to be the peace brokers and frankly the donors have a big role to play in this they had a big role in not well I would say not fulfilling their objective of do no harm in the way that they funded the peace process with I think there are now six different donor coordination mechanisms surely that means one I mean why do you have six donor coordination mechanisms for the peace process it is a little bit absurd but for sure a genuine political process by which a federal structure and it is in the NLD manifesto that they will work towards a constitutional federalism in there when they want to change the constitution but at the moment all they are talking about in terms of changing the constitution is to have Aung San Suu Ji as president this is a you know a problem but I really I mean I think all we can say is that I would hope that that would happen and I fear that it won't just one point can I add the military people believe that military doesn't really want peace with ethnic groups because having those so many ethnic armies fighting then they can justify their expansion they can justify the important role in the country that's why they are not genuinely want peace with the government that's the commonly held belief in the country perhaps a bit more upbeat in the sense that I think there have been moments during the last five years where I think a breakthrough was almost on the horizon and then things went wrong I think that the military have got this is the way they botched the transition trying to force the ethnic minority ceasefire groups to become border guard forces under the army's command the ethnic minorities had signed up to the constitution many of the people who boycotted the national convention in the 1990s were campaigning for it the same document essentially no changes which showed that they were actually weakened relative to the military over the course of 20 years so they are in a weakened position they are willing to accept the border guard force proposal the issue was the timing would it be before or after the elections and the military overplayed their hand so the military know that this is one area of the transition that they got wrong and they I think have accepted the need for something else but what that something else is is not quite clear the fact that the word federalism is on the agenda I think it's an enormous step forward this is a taboo word the F word in the Myanmar context I'm seriously talking about some kind of power sharing devolution resource sharing settlement the contours of that have to be hammered out and it will be very difficult but I think there are smart people in the military who understand this has to happen and the difficulty is getting all the big players in the same room because this has been a big issue and establishing trust between the main parties in the sequencing of things like the disarmament of groups emerging into the military these are the things that have to be worked out I would hope that we would see within this parliament we will see movements towards a genuine political settlement and constitutional changes to enshrine that that's and I think there is some space for optimism but it's a very very difficult road and the fact that she feels the need to lead the process tells you how fraught it's going to be and her what authority does she have to control the military this is the difficulty it's all about can you get a pacted transition where everybody's on board and you can really trust those commitments in a fragmented constitutional system excuse me that's a real real difficulty sorry I don't see the Damador being willing to give up the I mean even at the union peace conference in January when they brought all those hundreds of delegates together to talk about it the military's main demand was a single army that was their number one demand and they want that before you can have any political settlement this is the sequencing issue at what point do the ethnic minority ceasefire militias become part of border guard forces under essentially army command and there's a reason why the ceasefire groups can't move to do that until there's political settlement it has to be as part of an overall settlement which is why I agree with you that the issue is not about ceasefires the issue is about negotiating a settlement that is stepwise and has binding commitments on a strict timetable I do think that there are forces for compromise but it's going to be very difficult and there does need to be compromise I think on both sides the infighting among the ethnic minorities is a serious problem too willing sometimes to be used as divide and rule pawns by the military and play that old game but I think as you say there are educated people who are open minded even in parliament to making some kinds of changes it's not going to be easy but I hope there is some space for optimism Mardi? I think it's like the problem is that many ceasefire groups complain that after they sign ceasefire some of them have been grabbed under the name of development and there is one biggest issue that they lost their trust even more and another one is like this is not just about ethnic fighting or ceasefire but it is resource based territory control and power actually the military directly involving this issue together with crony and some of you might already saw global witness including general country has been involved in catching state so this is like the direct involvement of the military in resource business that is a problem and military will not willing to negotiate unless their interests are secure Many people also wondered about another ethnic minority or a religious minority Li and so also before mentioned Islamophobia and so a couple of questions came in with regard to the situation of the Rohingya Now Isabel Jacques had a question with regard to Rakhine State, are you here? Yeah, alright and I suggest we then also have a question combined with this by Sally McDonald who also wondered about the Rohingya but maybe you could My question then was what expectations are there that the new government will address the long standing problems in Rakhine State of centre periphery tensions inter-communal and inter-religious conflict with minority Muslim communities and extreme poverty and under development and how might the new government do so so it's a big question Sally asked what practical steps would each of the panellists take towards lessening the problems of the Rohingya so if you maybe have solutions in terms of how the government could move forward with regard to that issue and then also what Isabel just addressed, how do we deal with this and it's really interesting on the happy working in Rakhine State and particularly working with both Rohingya and Rakhine women when we talk about Rohingya we don't necessarily talk about Rakhine because we talk about Rohingya and both is nationalist so when even though these both Rakhine and Rohingya live same amount of population in Rakhine State when actually talk about this they talk about Rohingya only so when I met with a lot of Rakhine and they feel like there's nobody interested in Rakhine State or what Rakhine people suffer they talk about only Rohingya so this is the reason that Rakhine is the only ethnic party actually won the election so they feel that only Rakhine people can protect Rakhine but second point is that I like to hear like an emphasise is in terms of Bami's concept Rakhines are considered most distrust people so there is a proverb saying that if you see a Rakhine and it points in a snake you kill Rakhine so there is Rakhine feel that they are the lowest of the low in Bami's ethnic rank and yet they feel like international community as well as community target at that so that created a lot of problem and I see many young tourist guide becoming soldiers they feel like they need to defend so we need to watch out we don't want to encourage them more growing tension inside their community but also really the really sad thing is that when I actually worked with them they told me many stories that they were together before without any problem so up to 2012 so they were saying that we went to the school together so actually there is something there the community the valued and another point is basically also we need to listen to the community community of both side then we can make a policy and one of the most fundamental issue of this Rakhine Rohingya issue is that we need ethare research based on history and anthropology and looking at interviewing the people who lived there and going back to the history how did it happen but also we need to look at 1982 citizenship law which is far too restrict so this law need to be changing but also there is a kind of we need to go beyond the name of Rohingya but we need to go beyond these people who live there is a both side are saying that there are Rohingya people living there for a century but also there are newcomers that are being brought to the former government and coming to Burma to go to that world country to become refugee so like these issues we need to do research thoroughly rather than like we are skeptical again Suneta you are shaking your head ah I didn't think you'd see that I I really appreciate the question and particularly the way that you put it actually Isabel because as Dr Marr said that Rakhine State I've been thinking about it in the last few days actually the Rakhine State is the turkey of Europe right and in fact Rakhine State there is not a single new road that has been built in Rakhine State since about 92 you know there is not a bridge there has been no development in that part of Myanmar and it could be an extremely wealthy part of the the country there was for a very short period between 95 and 97 I think before the Asian collapse there was some significant investment in the area from Southeast Asian companies that were doing prawn farms and fisheries and so on that dried up after the Asia collapse but I mean you know Rakhine friends, Rakhine people that I know have been for years been prevented from getting the licences they need to buy the new engine for their boats so that they can work more effectively I mean for years everything has been the lid has been very tightly held on Rakhine State that it would have no development and as a result it ends up being blow up in ethnic tension and as for the Rohingya, I mean the Rohingya there are still still since 1992 refugee camps in Bangladesh of Rohingya refugees that fled in 92 they are still there it is not just a Burmese problem and I think probably the only way it can be addressed and can be solved is by talking about it as not just a Burmese problem because the camps in Myanmar are actually a hell of a lot better than the camps that they've been living in in Bangladesh but they are still awful and it's not tenable just to leave it as it is it's not tenable to actually I don't think to go back to history and try and justify their presence that isn't the point, the point is now the present, how are we going to live together they have been Rohingya businesses have been incredibly reliant on cheap Rohingya labour everywhere in Rohingya State it was the Rohingya that did all the dirty jobs that they're needed there just needs to be some settlement there but the Rohingya need to be respected by the Burmans as a I mean it is no coincidence that Rohingya State was the last state that became part of what was then Myanmar before Burma before the British occupied and it was the first state that the British took so it is no coincidence there's never been a very happy part of Burma and the NLD Government I think is going to have to find some way of working with the Rakhine National League for Democracy and they're going to have to do serious development work there that has never taken place before and I think through that and through talking with it as a regional issue I mean Bangladesh is an extremely low lying country there is global warming there are masses of migration happening from Bangladesh all over the place and that is not to deny the Rohingyas that have been living in Myanmar forever but there are many that Bangladesh is leaving to go everywhere and it's going to be a continuing problem in the region so I think there's an opportunity to internationalize it there's also an opportunity to as Turkey is demanding from Europe now to give them the development the financial assistance they need to improve the lot of all the people in Rakhine State including the Rohingya Since you mentioned development it's probably a good time to talk about the economic challenges that Burma is facing and you mentioned the lack of roads in that part of Burma now the government has made huge promises in terms of infrastructure development and so Joshua had a question about who is actually going to pay for this and how will they pay for it are you here Joshua? Yeah alright over there I was just curious what the panel's view is in terms of this committed increase in public spending in education healthcare where is the money coming from and as we know the reality is that there are not many companies who are paying to increase a huge amount of taxes in Burma and also the revenue collection is very poor as well and I can just make it very clear there's nothing to do with my personal tax planning Now I don't know what the revenue collection percentages in Burma how many people actually do pay taxes but it's usually very low below 10% probably now how do you see this issue? Yeah I ask you they did not come out apart from the election manifesto they didn't come out with the concrete plans but they are behind the scenes they've been kind of talking planning for the short time and long time because and I knew that the economic committee met on Saturday with Don San Suici and then one member told us that they have planned for the 100 day plan so their main agenda is to alleviate poverty and create jobs they wanted to be seen in the first 100 days that they are the party for the people and help the people and they are the revenue policies and I asked them one of the members and then they just send me the email just before I came into this room and then the analyst economic policies will be based on three pillars he said number one is the fiscal prudence which covers the taxation and they understand that they are like a huge problem for the government there are so many people who avoid taxes and also the cronies they pay very little tax one crony I remember that I shouldn't quote him because it's the author record he told me that one of the top cronies in Myanmar then in one of our my conversation with him he said he was asked he was accused of supporting the government he said no no no I wasn't supporting the government because you know I paid tax he let it out because he said that I was paying you know he earned his income in US dollars but he was paying back to the government on the official term that time is six charts per dollar you know so then the kind of thing and the three pillars the NLD will be and NLD's economic policies is fiscal prudence reform of government and revitalization of agriculture so under the fiscal prudence they are planning to have a range of different taxes they didn't explain whether that will be raising the tax but he said they understand the problem of tax avoidance so they will have a very new range of taxes to adjust the marginal rates of taxation introduce new kinds of tax to increase tax base Lee How has the government been financing rising expenditure a lot of it is through borrowing the continued monetization of government debt so the central bank is supposed to not do this but essentially prints money lends to the government and this is serious some people are talking about an IMF intervention to correct a persistent deficit issue export revenues are going to continue to be absolutely crucial to the state there's no way that the NLD government is going to be able to revitalize agriculture in 100 days or 100 years that is not going to become the fiscal basis of the state it just won't agriculture produces about 25% of GDP, employs 70% of the people but only 25% of GDP so gas exports that's 2 billion a year so this is going to continue to be crucial and this is a very severe dilemma for the government export revenues that are vital to the state's integrity but on the other hand if you're exporting all of your gas and hydropower how do you provide the electricity that's required for raising standards of living and for fueling factories and development it's a difficult trade off and that's one that's going to have to be confronted and of course the resource export issues are tied up with all these kind of extractive investments and compacts in the border lands and are very thorny issues there is massive scope for improvement in revenue collection Bob Taylor gives some figures in his work and I think one figure that comes to my mind is something like 5% something like that about 5% of the state's income comes from ordinary taxation revenue so it's very poor and it shows the sheer weakness of Myanmar state structures apart from the military so there is massive scope for change of collecting the existing taxations without really creating new taxes but the main area where you could really ramp up enforcement and really make a lot of hard caches on the borders because a lot of border trade is highly irregular and the military government and the previous administration tried to re-root a lot of trade away from the borders and through the port of Yangon with some considerable success but as we know from say the global witness report on Jade a lot of Jade is going across the Chinese border a lot more than we ever realised if we are to trust that report $7 billion worth a year I mean there is clearly scope for the people to be getting a share of the people's natural resources at the moment it's going to benefit a very narrow clique of individuals but they are very powerful clique of individuals and so taxation is not a neutral technical issue it's a political matter it will be something fought over just like everything else in the next five years We are running a little bit behind in terms of time now another question with regard to the economy came from Anne Booth she is probably already writing on her next book so she was interested in how one actually can collect data in Burma and what statistics basically mean if they are reliable has Burma become a data producing country but I suggest that we probably talk quickly because we have a couple of minutes left about Burma's international relations and international standing because we've really just touched on this briefly in the beginning I also would like of course give Thai Embassy an opportunity to call so as tomorrow and protest about the kind of questions we are discussing so I Now Burma is receiving Burma as his model for government given that we have Nigeria as a model we have Indonesia as a model and now Thailand has Burma as a model Okay Maybe we'll start with Mari I think you might have more knowledge than me I think I've already persona non grata in Thailand Exactly Fire away I think that if there's a parallel to be drawn it's with the 90s in Myanmar rather than that right and the 90s in Myanmar were trying to create a constitution to transfer power to a disciplined democracy which is now what they've done and they couldn't do it in the 90s because people were too agitated and too mobilised against the military so the democrats were not going to compromise the NLD was not going to accept those terms and many of the ethnic minority ceasefire groups were not in ceasefires and they were boycotting the national convention so it was a great deal of societal opposition so the military was not able to achieve what it wanted it sounds familiar looking at Thailand the military has now drafted two constitutions both of them rejected by everybody both of them are substantively identical because they're really struggling to square the circle of how do you restore democracy in a way that the most popular party can't return to power that is not a circle you can easily square the difference I guess is that they're trying to rely much more on non-military institutions to discipline and control the next government so I wouldn't say that they're looking to Myanmar as a model but certainly they're trying to create a discipline democracy and the different and the parallel with Thailand is people are very mobilised they're not going to just take that line down so my prediction when the military staged a coup was that it would be just as much a waste of everybody's time as the previous one and I think my prediction is sadly being borne out so I think in the end they will not retreat proudly from power as in Myanmar I think they will have to admit defeat and hand over in a kind of cac handed way basically being defeated because they have no clue as to how to resolve the social conflict at the heart of Thailand's crisis Sunita are you planning on travelling to Thailand? Only in transit I think the question is really interesting because look at the past 20 years and look at the ups and downs that there have been throughout the 90s they were coup after coup in Thailand you would never know if you would arrive on the day of a coup or would it be okay through the early 90s certainly the critical part of it I think and the part that's really important for Myanmar to learn is that this is what happens if you have democracy in a country where you don't have democratic participation in democracy when you don't have active citizens who understand the relationship between the taxation that they pay and the people that represent them in parliament where you have a government that might give you lots of fridges, cars, nice roads the Asian argument that economic development has to come before democracy actually it doesn't, it comes democracy doesn't necessarily have any relation to it at all and that's why at the beginning I really think that the critical part over the next five years is to ensure that this is not what happens in Myanmar that we have active citizens who understand what it means to be living as a citizen in a democratic country and how to uphold their government to account whether or not the military is still there that is still going to be important If Thailand copies from Myanmar then one incident just happened last week which is that one opposition party member was charged with the communications act because he criticised a general in his Facebook post as a direct copy Now it's 7.46 so maybe we'll come to the last question which maybe you could just briefly answer the broader kind of geopolitical battle of course is between the United States and China over maybe Southeast Asia the South China Sea but then many people have also said that Burma at some point decided to open up because of the fear that it may just become another Chinese province Now how do you see this issue Henry Devereux has a question what opportunities and threats does the superpower of China pose for the evolving politics and economy in Myanmar very briefly Sue China has always been an important neighbour for the countries but in the recent past that Myanmar people have quite lost their capacity to what's China because of some of the projects that military government may deal with the Chinese like Mewsundam the large dam project up in the north and also the Copa Mai project which local people resented but China has always been there and the Myanmar government or whichever the government needs to deal with China it's an opportunity as well as challenge to have a very very close relationship with Myanmar because it sees the country Myanmar as its gateway to the South Asia and to the sea but with the opening that's why we saw flurry of visits from the Chinese diplomats to the NLD headquarters in the recent past so they understand what from their past is that dealing only with the military government would not for their the country's interest so I think there would be a closer relationship between the NLD NLD also will diversify their dealing with the west as well as the neighbouring countries Thank you I think the interesting thing about China is that you know it more than before because of the amount of interest from other countries in Myanmar's very important geopolitical position Burma is no longer the weakest partner in that relationship and the Chinese clearly need Burma at this point quite a lot not more than Burma needs him and a lot of the debts that Myanmar has are in fact to the Chinese government so the question of the mid zone dam is obviously going to be a huge problem for the NLD government to sort out with China but the development of Chaupew as Burma's China's western seaboard is probably more important than mid zone to China let's hope but yeah I mean sitting next to China is not going to be very comfortable for Myanmar and never has been Yeah so obviously Myanmar may want a more balanced relationship a more equidistant relationship I think that's always been Myanmar's foreign policy actually it's just not been able to achieve that disengagement is not an option so this links to Ann's question about statistics it took me about 2 hours to work this out today so I have to say these statistics there's a lot of work ok China still accounts for 14% of inward foreign investment and 40% of foreign investment stock in Myanmar so it's a little trade as of the first half of last year so there's a massive structural dependence on China and it is unfortunately rather one way although Myanmar is very important to China strategically so China's not going away it remains vital economically it's also involved in the peace process and it's a key actor it has close ties to a number of the ceasefire and non-seasfire groups and it's going to be a big factor shaping the future the question is what is the quality of that engagement China for example will continue to seek to build large scale infrastructure projects in Myanmar the one belt one road agenda clearly sets the direction of travel the question is is this infrastructure going to be as it has in the past tied up with land grabs, forced displacement crony capitalism environmental devastation and the fueling of ethnic conflict obviously we would hope not so the question is how is this engagement going to be governed and here there is a role I think for the Asian infrastructure investment bank which has western states on its board to ensure that these projects are governed appropriately there's a role for international non-governmental organisations to do that and domestic non-governmental organisations and of course the state to ensure that the benefits of these projects can be shared and they are governed properly in accordance with what are on paper relatively good laws so and I think there is evidence from research going on at Oxford that the Chinese companies already realised that the game has changed and they are upping their game in terms of environmental assessments and engaging with local communities and there are some interesting donor projects around special economic zones for example that are more about bottom up grassroots participation in setting the parameters for these kinds of external projects so China is not going away the question is how do you engage with it and how do you steer that engagement in a way that is for the good of the many rather than the few final word I think it's we still have to engage with China but civil society roles has become very important and environmentalist civil society they are the one who want to hold the mission down so civil society will be working with the NLD and there is a growing resentment of families towards Chinese as exploiters and this concept will be also increasing under the government so really NLD has to balance out between the two of growing resentment of families and they are more knowledgeable more aware of what is going on in the society and how much and how does Chinese government exploit in Burma and they have to continue to engage with Chinese government so they need to balance out between the two so we've covered nine out of ten questions which I think is pretty good the reception is one floor up same building all that's left is to ask you to please join me to thank our panellists for sharing their insight