Here in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the arguments for why the city is in such horrible political shape is that an emerging political power base in the ’60s consistently worked to maintain its own control by systematically crushing the aspirations of those that followed, essentially eating its young. The plan worked, for them.

As it creeps toward the maybe elections this fall, the similar actions by the State Peace and Development Council (aka, the military dictators of Myanmar) have created much the same climate and, predictably, the same results.

From the Integrated Regional Information Networks Asia:

A lack of capacity on several levels is likely to hamper Myanmar”s bid to change its political structure, diplomats and analysts say.

The military government this month took another step on the “roadmap” for what it says will be a transition to democracy when it unveiled laws for an election later this year, the country’s first in two decades.

The government has said the roadmap, launched in August 2003, will lead to a “discipline-flourishing democracy”.

Among the changes to be made will be the creation of a presidential system of government, a bicameral legislature and 14 regional governments and assemblies, which the International Crisis Group describes as “the most wide-ranging shake-up in a generation”.

But given the military’s reluctance to relinquish its grip on power and the long suppression of democratic activity in Myanmar, diplomats say the transition will face significant challenges – one of the most critical being whether the public service has the capacity to sustain the change.

A top-down decision-making process and limited development assistance and exposure to capacity-building programmes are among the factors that would hamper the ability of the public service to sustain a transition.

“There is obviously insufficient bureaucratic capacity in Myanmar today to manage and implement a ‘transition to democracy’,” Trevor Wilson, the Australian ambassador to Myanmar from 2000 to 2003, told IRIN.

All of that is, of course, to the benefit of the generals who, if they allow an election to take place, and further allow a new govern met to be seated, have sown the seeds of that government’s own collapse, which leaves them free to step in and restore order, peace and development.

I swear there must be something in the water.

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