Mangel på uddannede administratorer og ledelseskapacitet på adskillige niveauer kan hindre Burmas muligheder for at skabe forandringer i den politiske struktur, siger flere diplomater og analytikere ifølge IRINNEWS
YANGON: The military government this month took another step on the “roadmap” for what it says will be a transition to democracy when it unveiled laws for an election later this year, the country’s first in two decades.
The government has said the roadmap, launched in August 2003, will lead to a “discipline-flourishing democracy”.
Among the changes to be made will be the creation of a presidential system of government, a bicameral legislature and 14 regional governments and assemblies, which the International Crisis Group describes as “the most wide-ranging shake-up in a generation”.
But given the military’s reluctance to relinquish its grip on power and the long suppression of democratic activity in Myanmar, diplomats say the transition will face significant challenges – one of the most critical being whether the public service has the capacity to sustain the change.
A top-down decision-making process and limited development assistance and exposure to capacity-building programmes are among the factors that would hamper the ability of the public service to sustain a transition.
“There is obviously insufficient bureaucratic capacity in Myanmar today to manage and implement a ‘transition to democracy’,” Trevor Wilson, the Australian ambassador to Myanmar from 2000 to 2003, told IRIN.
– IRINNEWS writes on Friday
