Than Shwe is a liar, a thief and a tyrant but first he's that missing village idiot

"Pundita,
I don't know how much more news I can take about Burma. Can't we talk about North Korea or Iran?
Caesar in San Francisco"

Dear Caesar:
Burma is the crossroads of all that's screwy about the 21st Century. Understand Burma and you're the Wise Man.

It's rumored that World Bank economists have resorted to drawing stick figures in the attempt to teach Than Shwe how to read a spreadsheet. To no avail. All Than Shwe knows how to do is oversee military psyops and repress dissent. The process of government is a big blank for him.

The country is the world's Poor Little Rich Nation -- it's rich in energy resources but the government is so poorly managed and suffers from so much corruption that the majority of Burmese are starving.

Burma's monks did not enter the protests because of a desire for democracy; it's because they were facing starvation. Here's a crash course on the underlying situation, courtesy of the Guardian's Ian MacKinnon:

The average Burmese worker once spent half their meagre daily wages just getting to and from work. The other half went on food. But fuel price rises that doubled petrol and diesel prices led to dramatic bus fare increases. Now commuting swallows 70% of the daily income, leaving little for sustenance. School fees or a medical bill can tip many over the edge.

Those working in Rangoon's industrial zone can be seen trudging for an hour back and forth to work because they can no longer afford the fares. That explains why so many have taken to the streets in a country where inflation had already hit 40% this year before the latest price hikes. Electricity in Rangoon regularly goes off without warning for five or six hours, compounding the sense of misery.

The upshot is that many Burmese could no longer afford to make donations to the monasteries, which are supported by donations. This is the only reason the monastic heads, who are in league with the regime, allowed the rank-and-file monks to protest.

Another way to explain all this is to say that Than Shwe's grasp of governing is so limited that his poor decision-making guaranteed there would be protests over the fuel hikes, which morphed into democracy protests. (Many of the younger or subordinate monks are pro-democracy.)

Burma is a country where the government is quite literally the military. There is simply not enough technical expertise in their military to provide an adequate knowledge base for the job of governing. Of course such expertise can be purchased from outside the country but here we run into the corruption issue; Burma shares with Somalia the title of world's most corrupt national government. It's expensive to hire legions of foreign consultants. Burma's ruler would rather spend the money lining his pockets and those of his cronies and bribing his fellow officers into not launching a coup against him.

If you agree to plow through the following two background reports from PINR, Pundita promises to fit in some words next week about North Korea and Iran. The reports are a primer on bad government planning. To get the ball rolling I'll quote a few passages from one of the reports:

The junta has successfully melded the Myanmar economy into one that is dependent and focused on the export of its resources. Arguably, it appears that the junta has little economic planning experience and its priorities lie in the promotion of military power. [Thus] it has produced a situation in which little value is added to any resources, whether it is copper, timber, or energy, producing an economy dependent on imports and exposed to the volatility of resource prices. It has managed resource rents and foreign investment poorly; planned hydroelectric projects will likely be forced to export electricity due to the inability of domestic infrastructure to handle the increased load.

Similarly, the information technology project of Yadanabon, likely a response to a similar project in Malaysia, is typical of the economic oddity that the junta often embarks on with little thought to planning. Communication infrastructure within the country is archaic and will not support the proposed project. Likewise, the jatropha (physic nut tree) plantations currently being planted across the country, another junta project, will not result in any significant economic development. The fuel requires significant infrastructure to turn into bio-diesel, which likely means it will be exported in its raw form to neighboring countries while the land under plantation could arguably be better utilized to feed the population. Regardless, the aging diesel engines that are in use throughout Myanmar will not be able to burn the resulting fuel stock effectively even if the domestic infrastructure were available.

One of the factors that may exacerbate the situation is the state of Myanmar's banking sector. The junta has announced a restriction on withdrawals from banks, raising echoes of the banking crisis of 2003. These restrictions are typical for unstable times, but due to the shaky status of the private banks especially, it is likely to cause even further economic hardship for the people of Myanmar. Monks may represent the spiritual backbone of the protests, but it is the general populace who has been successfully cowed by the junta into an attitude of self-preservation, which will ultimately have to be driven to demand change.

The military has made a supreme effort to remove itself from contact with the population: barracks and bases are situated away from towns, and the new capital is a study in strategic withdrawal to the hinterland. It is the populace who has the most to lose from rampant inflation and evaporating savings, but faces an incredibly resilient and increasingly isolated military that has kept a stranglehold on power since 1962.(1)

1) The Economic Factors Behind the Myanmar Protests

2) See also PINR's Pipeline Politics: India and Myanmar. The report illustrates how big a prize Burma has become for energy-hungry neighbors.