The cost of brutality
Junta boss Min Aung Hlaing frequently urges ministries and regional and state governments of his regime to tighten their belts and minimize waste. At an Oct.18 meeting of the Economic Committee, he went further and suggested forming a committee to ensure money from the proposed budget is well spent.
The move offered more confirmation that the hole in the regime’s budget is growing by the day.
The regime has been running a steep budget deficit thanks to a calamitous drop in foreign investment since the military seized power in 2021. Foreign investors fled the country after it was hit by international sanctions. Exports have also plummeted due to economic turmoil and frequent policy changes, and tax revenues have declined sharply. The junta’s budget crisis has been exacerbated by rampant corruption among high-ranking officials, with two senior generals jailed for life earlier this month after being found guilty of high treason, bribe-taking, and illegal possession of foreign currency.
The military meanwhile continues to enjoy the largest share of the budget, as Min Aung Hlaing desperately seeks to keep his grip on power, at the expense of Myanmar’s people.
Militarizing the bureaucracy
The junta’s key arms supplier, Russia, is providing assistance in various other sectors too, ranging from diplomacy, trade and education to nuclear technology.
One Russian official well-known to Min Aung Hlaing is Grigoriev Evgeny Dmitrievich, who has hosted the junta boss during several of his visits to Russia. The chair of the St Petersburg government’s External Relations Committee arrived on his first trip to Myanmar this week, holding Oct.18-19 talks on cooperation in higher education.
He also met ex-Maj-Gen Aung Thaw, who chairs the Union Civil Service Board and is a former Defense Services Academy classmate of Min Aung Hlaing and onetime Russia-Myanmar Friendship Association chairman.
The two discussed training for civil servants through an agreement between the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) and Myanmar’s two civil service institutes.
Dmitrievich visited the Central Institute of Civil Service (Upper Myanmar) and discussed provision of Russian language lessons and other assistance in academic matters.
He joined the institute’s rector, ex-military officer Kyaw Soe, to observe budding bureaucrats undergo basic military training at the institute. He also visited the Defense Services Academy in Mandalay’s Pyin Oo Lwin.
Successive military regimes, from that of the late dictator Ne Win to the quasi-civilian government led by ex-general Thein Sein, have forced civil servants to undergo military training and lectures on the ideological foundations of the regime. The forced indoctrination was discontinued when the National League for Democracy government came to power in 2016.
However, the current regime was quick to reintroduce military training at the institutes following its coup, and is now cooperating with Russia to further these aims.
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