Horst Rudolf သို႔ ေဒါက္တာဦးျမင့္၏ ျပန္ၾကားခ်က္

(ဓာတ္ပံု - NCW)

စီးပြားေရး ပညာရွင္ ေဒါက္တာဦးျမင့္က မဇၥ်ိမ သတင္းဌာနမွာ ေဖာ္ျပခဲ့တဲ့ Horst Rudolf ရဲ႕ U Myint’s ‘Useless’ paper on reducing poverty ဆိုတဲ့ ေပးစာကို ျပန္ၾကားခ်က္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဧရာဝတီ အယ္ဒီတာထံသို႔ ေပးပို႔လာတဲ့ ေဒါက္တာဦးျမင့္ရဲ႕ ျပန္စာကို မူရင္းအတိုင္း ေဖာ္ျပလိုက္ပါတယ္။

Yangon
8 June 2011

Dear Mr. Rudolf:
Subject: U Myint’s useless paper on reducing poverty in Myanmar: the way forward.

1. I refer to your letter on the above subject published in Mizzima News on 27 May 2011. I wish to draw the following points to your attention.

2. This is the most useless and counterproductive paper: It would be more helpful to the people of Myanmar if you could be specific about what are in my paper that have offended you so much and have prompted you to use language that would embarrass fish mongers in the Yangon fresh fish market.

3. Career as diplomat and ambassador: I regret that your career as diplomat and ambassador is not reflected in the way you have drafted your letter to Mizzima. I wish the same decorum and courtesy that you may have displayed in expressing your views to your colleagues in your country, could also be extended to a Burmese national of whom you seem to know nothing about.

4. Expert in development politics: The subject of development politics in which you claim to be an expert is not known to us. I will be grateful if you could tell me in which German university Burmese students can acquire knowledge on this subject.

5. Thirty-three paragraphs on poverty: You are probably not aware that when you were serving as first secretary in your embassy here, and until recently, poverty is a seven letter word that cannot even be whispered, let alone to write a paper and talk about it in front of the key decision-makers in the country. I wanted to lift this taboo once and for all and to help our people realize that there is no harm in admitting that there are poor people in Myanmar and their problems need to be fixed. That is why 27 paragraphs (not 33) are specifically devoted to this topic.

6. Fortunately, you not a Burmese: Here I am in perfect agreement with you. Many career diplomats in Myanmar’s foreign service share your view that it is fortunate that you are not a Burmese. This is because I have been their mentor and teacher in the foreign ministry and if you were a Burmese career diplomat, your letter to Mizzima would be very embarrassing for all of them.


7. Angry about using tax money: When I took up a post at the United Nations upon secondment by the Government of Myanmar and which required a cabinet decision, I had to renounce my pension entitlement for the years of service I put in as a research assistant at the Research Department of the Institute of Economics, as Head of the Economics Department at the Institute of Education, and as Chief of the Economic Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I am at present living on my UN pension. I have never received any pension from the Government of Myanmar. I have no office, secretary, or research assistant. I work mostly in my home. When I was asked to head an economic advisory unit in the President’s office, I agreed to take on the job on one condition, namely that no special favours or remuneration of any kind be awarded to me. The President’s office has respected my wish. At present, I am also serving as advisor, upon request, to the President of the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry. In that capacity, my travel, meals and accommodation expenses to attend meetings and in performing official duties as an economic advisor at Naypyitaw are met by the Myanmar business community. As such, no public funds are used or are involved in any way in my current activities as a researcher, teacher and economic advisor. So Mr. Rudolf, there is really no need for you to be angry about me wasting tax money on drafting, reproducing, presenting and disseminating my poverty paper. Instead, I suggest it would be more worthwhile for you to direct your anger at some governments that are spending billions of Euros of taxpayer money (including your own) to bail out countries and business firms that got into a financial mess due to their own mismanagement and incompetence.

8. Poverty reduction in Myanmar is (basically) more than simple: Next time you come to Yangon, take a taxi ride. Ask the taxi driver: “what is the gasoline price”. That is a question that will fire him up and I can guarantee, you will get a lively and colourful response from him for your query. He will enlighten you not only on what is wrong with the gasoline price, but what is wrong with the economy, and why reducing poverty is not simple in this country, and something he is not likely to see in his lifetime.

9. Banking system, exchange rate, tea money, transparent budget, building up health, education, etc.: Here I am confused. A more careful reading will show that all these are mentioned in my paper. So, if you claim there is nothing worthwhile in the paper and it is utterly useless and counterproductive, why are you repeating the things I have said in my paper that should be done to go forward with poverty reduction in the country?

10. No academic paper explaining why the main railway station in Yangon is unclean: Against tremendous odds, there are at present a lively debate and exchange of views, as well as, articles and investigative reports in the local and external Burmese news media dealing with economic, social and political issues of vital concern to the people of Myanmar, including the poor state of public services and the rapidly deteriorating social and physical infrastructure, together with ideas and suggestions on how to deal with them. However, these are conducted in the Burmese language and beyond the reach of most foreigners. It is probably true that there is no academic paper on how to clean up the dirty Yangon railway station. I suspect this is because the people here feel it is not a matter requiring priority attention at this moment.

11. Main railway station in Yangon is dirty, disorganized, chaotic and extremely poor place: I can understand why you are upset with the dirty and disorganized state of the Yangon central railway station. But I am sure you will agree with me that there are many other things in the country that both you and I should be more upset about. To give you one example, There are at present 21 young people out in the dry zone area of Myanmar undertaking a village survey that has helped me write my poverty paper that you find utterly useless. Fourteen of them are young girls. The village has no electricity and at night it is pitch black and you cannot see your hand in front of you. The girls and their companions sleep on the mud floor. They are all very tired, and so cannot be bothered by swarms of mosquitoes buzzing all around them. But what bothered them are the foot-long gekkos that crawl down the ceilings and walls to where they are sleeping, perhaps for a midnight snack of mosquitoes. These frighten the living day-lights out of the girls. So the villagers to allay their fear sprinkle onions on the floor saying that will keep the creatures away. In the morning, the girls to their horror, found one of the gekkos eating up the onions. The villagers remain unperturbed. With a straight face they tell the girls, that fellow although a foot long, is actually a baby gekko, not yet wise in the ways of the world.

12. Aside from gekko menace, there are no toilets. Toilet requirements are met by doing what the villagers refer to as “sitting in the bush”. And sitting in the bush is no fun, especially at night; because at night in the pitch darkness snakes, scorpions and leeches come crawling out all over the place.

13. To add to the woes of our young people, there are no proper roads and only jungle trails exist. The main mean of transport on the trails are “without” motor-cycle taxis operated by young man who are high on some stimulant or other and who worship Bond – James Bond. “Without” is the term used in this country to refer to vehicles smuggled from across the border and for which no custom duties or license fees have been paid. As such, these vehicles can be purchased cheaply and they are allowed to operate in some restricted areas, like jungle trails, upon payment of certain fees and dues to local authorities. The term “without” could also be applied not only to motor-cycles but to operators of these vehicles as well. While James Bond has a license to kill, it is doubtful our motor-cycle drivers have license to operate anything. All these mean we are asking for trouble.

14. Trouble came with recent downpour of heavy rains. These downpours turn jungle trails into muddy tracts which can cause half a motor-cycle wheel to sink into the slush. Gentle brooks and dry stream beds can turn into rushing torrents in a flash. My close colleague who is the leader of the village survey team tells me, only last week he had to desperately cling on to the motor cyclist up front and yell for help at the top of his voice on the verge of being swept away in one of these rushing torrents while crossing a stream, which he believed could have ended his life. As we can expect, there have been several accidents as well. A girl has been thrown off the motorbike and her helmet smashed into pieces. Another one thrown off suffered cuts and bruises. In another incident, a girl landed on the muddy tract with the motorbike on top of her. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt. But how long is this good fortune going to last for our young people?

15. Mr. Ambassador, I am telling you all this to let you know that I am not just writing stupid papers which offends some foreigners. Despite promise of greater transparency and accountability, my colleagues and I both here and abroad, have not yet got over the habit of doing many things under the radar on what we think might be good for this country and its people. I should also add, I am writing all this to help you understand that under present circumstances, it is better to have a dirty toilet in a dirty railway station, than to have no toilet at all and villagers and our sons and daughters who want to do something good for the country, have to sit in the bush, in darkness, with snakes and scorpions crawling around them.

16. The basics to run a railway station and to run a whole country are the same: This is an extraordinary statement. I think the basics to run a railway station has already been figured out in this country. If you have any doubts, visit Naypyitaw. There you will find a railway station, that is spic and span, and run on standards that I think you will approve. Not only the railway station, but many others – shiny edifices and government office complexes, luxury hotels, fancy restaurants and supermarkets, a modern conference center, and well manicured lawns and gardens – all of which I believe are run on basics that meet high international standards. Are you therefore suggesting that we should run the country like we are running Naypyitaw at present?

17. Not my business … diplomats don’t interfere: This is very wise advice. I regret you have not followed it. Now it is too late. Mr. Ambassador, I should inform you that there are conservative people in our society and in the political and government establishment that say: “Foreigners have a low opinion of us. They think we are country yokels and we don’t know what is good for us. They know better than us about what is good for us. So they like to lecture to us and delight in giving us unasked for advice. They are rude, arrogant, and treat us with contempt, and take a condescending and patronizing attitude towards us. They should not be trusted, and we must be on guard in dealing with them”. Your letter to Mizzima strengthens the hand of these conservatives and hardliners in our society.

18. To conclude, let me say I am not offended by what you have written about me and I assure you I have no ill feelings towards you. Why should I, because I don’t even know who you are. But let me tell you, I have written this response to your letter because I feel it is not fair and uncalled for, not to me but to the young people who are out in the villages, and to the journalists, academics, and people from all walks of life, both within and outside the country, who are talking and writing to change the mindset of those who are running the show to make this country a better place. It is not fair to say that all these are worthless. We are doing whatever we can to take advantage of the little spaces that are opening up for us, with a well-known figure also taking great personal risks in the process. As a diplomat and ambassador, you know better than me that the pen is mightier than the sword. So don’t get in our way, but do whatever you can to help us.

Yours sincerely,
U Myint