BANGKOK — Singapore’s “no new investment without reform” message to the Burmese generals is more than just a tough response to the widely condemned trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, say regional analysts.
It signals an end to the old indulgence of the junta for commercial reasons, and the beginning of a new collective more responsible attitude in with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
Singapore has been one of Burma’s biggest investors over the last 15 years and has been a de facto banking house for the regime. But the global financial crisis has changed that, possibly forever.
“The current financial crisis, and Singapore's grave exposure to it, makes [Singapore Senior Minister] Goh Chok Tong’s gesture more meaningful than it would be in more tranquil and prosperous times,” said Burma economy expert Prof Sean Turnell.
The cost of associating with the Burmese junta are “rather more than Singapore seems willing to pay” in its worst financial crisis in more than 40 years, said Turnell, who produces the Burma Economic Watch for Macquarie University in Australia.
For a long time, Singapore was Burma’s second-largest investor, spending heavily in tourism developments such as hotels and other areas.
China’s increasing importance to the junta had already pushed Singapore into investment third place.
Singapore banks have traditionally been a haven for money from both the junta chiefs and the leading Burmese companies that do business with them.
Singapore’s state-controlled Channel News Asia reported that Goh advised junta leader Than Shwe during a visit to Naypyidaw earlier this month that Singapore investors would likely stay away until “the picture is clear, before this move to democracy is seen to produce results.”
He was referring to the trial of Suu Kyi and the junta’s promised national elections in 2010.
Significantly, Goh is also chairman of the city state’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Turnell said that while Singapore’s economy was booming it was easy for the city state to indulge Burma’s excesses and ignore international opinion and Western-led sanctions.
“In straightened times the tolerance to one's indigent and grasping relatives in the Asean family might just stretch affections,” he told The Irrawaddy.
In prosperous times, the economic “cushion” allows countries such as Singapore to “ignore the reputational damage of indulging Burma's military leaders.”
“Now such a cushion is threadbare indeed, and the costs of associating with Burma's dysfunctional state apparatus are rather more than Singapore seems willing to pay.”
Singapore’s blunt economic message to Than Shwe and his cohorts comes as more member countries of Asean begin to openly criticize the junta and especially its trumped up trial of Suu Kyi on spurious allegations widely perceived as being intended to stop her participation in next year’s promised elections.
“Aung San Suu Kyi may be behind bars, but the junta is in the hot seat,” said the chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, Simon Tay.
“In the present circumstances, it is not only Western democracies and activists who protest what is being done. The telling evidence of the weight of opinion comes from looking across members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.”
And the reason, again, is economic.
Asean finally seems to have lost patience with its former tolerance and indulgence of the Burmese junta’s excesses, said the analysts.
“As Asean moves more determinedly toward a European Union style of economic community, with free trade, free movement of people and respect for human rights which lie at the core of the EU’s purpose, it can no longer continue to ignore a festering sore,” said the economic attaché of a European embassy in Bangkok, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the still sensitive nature of the issue.
“The political and economic landscape of this region is changing forever and the Burmese generals have yet to realize they are not only out of step but out of time,” he said.
irrawaddy
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