Start with civil service: Turnell says turning Myanmar’s fortunes will depend on clearing the decks of the bureaucracy (2024)

If economist turned political prisoner Professor Sean Turnell could go back in time, he would launch Myanmar’s reform journey from military state to liberal democracy by starting with a stronger transformation of its bureaucracy. For now, it’s all hypothetical.

Back in November 2015, the mission of the new government of Myanmar was to send a rocket up the political and institutional systems of the day as part of what one of its insiders refers to as a “heavy lifting” reform agenda.

By February the next year, when the new government took office, this marked a period of the first democratic transfer of power from military rule in decades. Everything was on the line to finally realise Myanmar’s potential and build something new. Things were great until they really weren’t.

“The military had their fingers in just about every pie right from the get-go, so the civilian government had to live through a constitution created in 2008 that really skewed the field in favour of the military,” Turnell told a Sydney audience.

“Even though, in theory, the reins of government were handed over, there was so much that was cut out that the [government of the day] couldn’t influence. And, above all, the military itself.”

From the military’s budget to defence force matters — none of these issues were open to discussion in the parliament. Control of border affairs, security agencies, the police, and home office were also out of bounds for elected officials.

Turnell also observed that there were limitations as to what influence the new government had over the country’s economic sphere, and there, more new parliamentarians learned about the status quo: there was to contend with.

“At no point could the civilian government have any operational or indeed any other control over the military — it was absolutely forbidden,” Turnell said.

“It really was stacked against them, even in the economic realm let alone the political. The very first hurdle we had was to get control of government finances, which had just been going crazy over the decades with money printing all for the military.

“But, if ruled out, it is the central item of government spending … in terms of being able to make cuts, it meant that we always had to work at the margins.”

Contending with a culture in the civil service that Turnell described as passive and designed to serve a military state with top-down, autocratic approaches was also a massive hurdle the nation’s leaders had to wrestle with.

The former adviser to Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi recounted visiting the Ministry of Planning and Finance for the first time and witnessing stacks of paper tied literally with red tape on every desk in the room.

In hindsight, Turnell said it was a mistake not to adopt a “bolder winnowing out” of the bureaucracy at the beginning of the new government’s term.

“The bureaucracy itself was incredibly hard to negotiate with. Whatever the high-minded and practical language of things like the National Solidarity and Peace Negotiation Committee (NSPC), confronting the practicalities of the bureaucracy was extraordinary,” Turnell said.

“In retrospect, going harder at some of those institutions, including the military, would probably have been advisable.

“And the central bank. We left in place the [hopeless governor] — that was partly to appease the military and some of the really powerful interests… but I think some sort of confrontation while the government had incredible political capital domestically and internationally would have been wiser.”

Turnell made his remarks at the launch event of his book at the Lowy Institute on Tuesday.

Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of Reform in Aung San Suu Kyi’s Myanmaris the economist’s second book to be published about his perspective of working as an adviser to the National League for Democracy (NLD) leader from 2016 to 2021.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s government was overthrown by a military coup by the Tatmadaw in 2021, which resulted in thousands being killed and more than 16,000 people arrested for bogus political charges.

The Tatmadaw accused the NLD party of widespread fraud over the country’s November 2020 general elections, where there was a swing for the NLPand against the military-aligned Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), and used this as grounds to overtake the capital city of Naypyidaw.

Turnell spent 650 days arbitrarily detained by the Myanmar military junta on charges relating to alleged breaches of Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act. He pleaded not guilty in court proceedings that were closed to the public, media scrutiny or foreign officials, and was finally released in November 2022 and sent back to Australia.

Speaking to The Mandarin, the former RBA senior economic analyst said that he had to be cautious about where and when he travelled from now on, even as a free man.

About two weeks after his return to Australia, the Department of Foreign Affairs passed on an official letter from Naypyidaw revoking Turnell’s amnesty, and ordering him to appear in court the next day to answer charges of breaching the conditions of his release.

In fact, there were no conditions placed on Turnell’s release from prison.

“Just after I got back [to Australia], the dictator over there withdrew my pardon and reissued an arrest warrant,” Turnell said.

“As much as I hate to admit it, that regime has to be completely gone — and not even any half measures — [if I were to travel to Myanmar again]. And the trouble is, because I’ve been outspoken and written these books, there are many individuals who they will probably target as well.”

When Turnell first took up his posting beside Aung San Suu Kyi — the newly elected civilian political leader but longtime public figure of democratic freedom — in 2016, he came eminently qualified. In addition to his former role at the RBA, he has previously served as a policy adviser to the IMF and World Bank and is an honorary professor of economics at Macquarie University.

Turnell observed a vibrant mood of hope in 2016, and ranks of educated, young deputy ministers were well-placed to shape the beginnings of a major economic transformation that Myanmar needed.

“I was sort of the person to bounce ideas off, and to be, in some way, sort of the voice of the international community or establishment economic thinking,” Turnell said of his role, noting that he also served as a form of wise counsel to these reformists about 20 years his junior.

“They will come up with brilliant ideas and they’d say ‘What do you think about this, Sean?’ And nine times out of 10, it would be just fantastic.

“I was the person who would say, ‘Well, okay, have you thought about this aspect, or have you read this report about how Vietnam did this, or how Korea did this?’ Things like that.”

As Aung San Suu Kyi’s direct adviser, Turnell was also able to feed ideas back to the government’s senior leadership.

It was a great way for someone external to the process of government to help facilitate the evolution of ideas through the system, he said, because being somebody who could not ascend in power meant being someone who could also be trusted.

“I couldn’t rise through the system or anything like that, there was nowhere for me to go. So in some ways, I was a bit of an honest broker,” Turnell said, describing his role as supportive by nature.

“I don’t mean that in terms of any personal quality, but it was an interesting position of being able to take ideas that they would run to the senior leadership and sometimes defend it or promote them.

“I was sort of just there to prod and be there to consult. I was there to be consulted rather than to drive anything myself,” he said.

Aung San Suu Kyi remains captive to the Tatmadaw, which Turnell says is essentially a ploy to use her as a human shield from resistance forces and organised civilian guerilla activists agitating for an end to the political power of the military.

In the short term, Turnell shared, he is terribly worried about the ongoing violence across the country and the lengths the military regime was prepared to go to keep a grip on power.

But towards the horizon, supporters of democracy in Myanmar have come to know that “surrender to military dominance” is untenable if they want a healthy, prosperous society.

“Longer term, I remain quite hopeful. I do think that this regime will fall,” Turnell said.

“It may still take a while, but if I look at the opposition movement now, I’m really just struck by how good they are.

“They’re armed with some of the lessons of what went wrong of the NLD government, they have learned from the mistakes — and don’t think we would see a situation again where the military would be allowed to sit there, with total control over their own activities, internal security, the police and the borders.”

Above all else, Turnell said, for Myanmar’s government and institutions to be regarded as legitimate the country needed a proper federated structure. This was the only way to address what he called the “original sin” of the state as a political entity — the oppression of Myanmar’s ethnic minorities.

“There must be justice — economic justice, political justice and so on, otherwise the country will meet together at all,” Turnell said.

“Coming up with a proper federal structure where ethnic minorities can have substantial degrees of freedom, even while existing within a unified country, is absolutely essential.

“The good news on that front is that I think these new opposition leaders now start from that premise, where I don’t think that was true back in 2016 — and not anything bad, but I think the attention then was ‘Fix the country, fix the economy, then we can turn around, think about federalism’.

“If [federalism efforts] come after, it might not come at all. And if it doesn’t come at all, then it’s hard to imagine Myanmar remaining a single unit,” he said.

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