Myanmar’s Wild

During the last monsoon, my colleague and I were sitting in a dilapidated taxi in Yangon. Our driver was controlling the steering wheel with one hand while clearing moisture from the windshield with the other. It was raining cats and dogs but his wipers were not working, just like the vehicle’s air-conditioning.

A thick fog on the glass obscured traffic on all sides of the taxi. When we reached a roundabout, the driver handed my colleague a piece of grimy cloth to clean the glass on his side so approaching cars could be spotted. Naturally, we were terrified!

Crammed in the back, we squeezed ourselves in the middle as the windows could not be fully closed and the roof was also leaking. I came to realize that this rundown taxi driving in torrential rain with fraught passengers was the perfect metaphor for the country’s current predicament.

By KYAW ZWA MOE

In the two years since a new quasi-civilian took over the reins of power, we have seen both positive and negative events in Myanmar, causing a mix of emotions— ranging from excitement and encouragement to anger and despair—for all those who live in the country or are involved in its issues.

After a slow and uncertain start in 2011, things really started to move last year. The year began with the release in January of many prominent political activists, journalists and monks who were serving lengthy prison sentences. Former student leaders, including Ko Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi, who led the nationwide popular uprising in 1988, have since become actively engaged in social and political affairs.

A little over a year later, the government still holds some members of opposition and ethnic armed groups captive, according to human rights organizations. Only now has the government of President U Thein Sein even acknowledged the existence of political detainees in the country, with the creation of a new committee to “grant liberty to remaining political prisoners,” as the New Light of Myanmar described it on Feb. 7. It’s a welcome step, but one that should have come much earlier.

A year ago, it was still far from clear whether U Thein Sein’s tentative moves toward reform would gain momentum or falter. Opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself emphasized this when she made her first overseas trip in over 20 years to attend the World Economic Forum in Bangkok at the end of May. “Our success will depend on how irreversible the reform