Who Can Save Burma?

Well, not the Technocrats from Singaphore, anyways:

Much attention is placed on China and its coming hosting of the Olympic Games as a diplomatic pressure point on the rampant Burmese junta. But there is a group of government businessmen-technocrats in Singapore who will also be closely monitoring the brutality in Rangoon. And, were they so inclined, their influence could go a long way to limiting the misery being inflicted on Burma's 54 million people.

Collectively known as "Singapore Inc", they gather around the $A150 billion state-owned investment house Temasek Holdings, controlled by a member of the ruling Lee family.

With an estimated $A3 billion staked in the country (and a more than $20 billion stake in Australia), Singapore Inc companies have been some of the biggest investors in and supporters of Burma's military junta — this while its Government, on the rare times it is asked, suggests a softly-softly diplomatic approach towards the junta.

When it comes to Burma, Singapore pockets the high morals it likes to wave at the West elsewhere. Singapore's one-time head of foreign trade once said as his country was building links with Burma in the mid-1990s: "While the other countries are ignoring it, it's a good time for us to go in … you get better deals, and you're more appreciated … Singapore's position is not to judge them and take a judgemental moral high ground."

But by providing Burma's pariah junta with the crucial equipment mostly denied by Western sanctions, Singapore has helped keep the junta and its cronies afloat for 20 years, since the last time the generals killed the citizens they are supposed to protect.

Withdraw that financial support and Burma's junta would be substantially weakened, perhaps even fail. But after two decades of profitable business with the trigger-happy generals and their cronies, that's about the last thing Singapore is likely to do. There's too much money to be made.

Nor is there any hope from China:

Every current regime has its own guilt feelings about their failed past actions that when reminded, struck deep regret and confusion among their leaders. In the current global order, every nation who has a part to play to change the fate of Burma is ruled by either a dimwit or a technocrat.

China, who is dubbed as the regional power in this part of the globe will never lift a finger in favor of Democracy. Remembering its own Tienanmen nightmare and Tibetan occupation, they would rather stay quiet about Myanmar rather than risk exposing its own rotting domestic policies.

Neither will there be any solace from Thailand, which is now ruled by Technocrats.

Technates are soul-less. They just want order, tranquility and productivity.