Burma in 1982: Incomplete Transitions

Abstract

BURMA IS IN the midst of a series of transitions, whose ultimate resolutions will in large part shape the nature of the political, economic, and internal structure of the nation over the next two decades. These changes, no matter how slow their movement may seem to outside observers, are profound in their implications, for they concern the future leadership of the state, its economic progress and direction, and the nature of its internal ethnic problems. When in August 1981 President Ne Win announced his plans to retire from that largely ceremonial position in the following November, he explicitly did so to ensure the measured movement toward a peaceful succession. Yet by retaining the chairmanship of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP), Ne Win has begun, but not completed, the stillunfinished transition to new national leadership. The party controls the political process and, by virtue of its status as the only legal political entity, relegates the Pyithu Hluttaw (Peoples' Assembly) to a mere expression of BSPP's will. Burma's Third Four-Year Plan came to an end on March 31, 1982. Its close marks the virtual midpoint between the economic liberalization mandated at the First BSPP Congress in 1971, approved by the party's Central Committee in 1972, and the close of the Twenty-Year Plan in 1993/94, when Burma is projected to achieve the status of an industrialized, socialist state. The Third Four-Year Plan, although impressive in its aggregate accomplishments and the most successful of Burma's eco-