Mainichi: Hadfield Takes on Omae

[carol@xxxxxxx]

Mainichi Daily News, Sunday, March 8, 1998

BURMA, GENERALS, CLEAN STREETS ... OMAE!

"With Respect" by Peter Hadfield

	Kenichi Omae is best known as a management wizard and economics guru and, I
must say, a likeable guy.  His views are often sought by the foreign media
here because he is a straight talker and an independent thinker, two rare
and refreshing qualities in Japan.
	But on one issue that straight talking is marred by a strange amount of
skewed thinking.  I am still trying to separate the intelligent man from the
deluded dreamer that Omae becomes when he writes about Burma.
	The latest claptrap was in the January edition of the organ paper of the
Japan-Myanmar Friendship Association.  "To our surprise, the Myanmar
military government is doing well," was Omae's headline.  Accompanying
Japanese businessmen to Burma he says he found a paradise where business was
booming and workers were content.  "The streets are so clean.  And there are
no slum quarters because there is no disparity of wealth."
	This rosy picture appears to be a reprint of an Omae story that was first
published in Sapio magazine last November.  (Mainichi Daily News readers may
remember it was partially translated at the time by Michael Hoffman.)
	I hate to disagree with a man five times more intelligent than me and
hundred times richer, but there most certainly ARE slums in Burma and there
most certainly IS a great disparity of wealth.
	Omae has often criticized people who disagree with his views for never
having visited Burma.  He tells them you can only understand the truth by
actually going there.
	But apparently it is possible to visit Burma and spend so much time
drinking champagne with businessmen and army generals that any understanding
of the truth is sucked right out of your brain.
	I HAVE been to Burma and I KNOW there are slums there because I have walked
through them.  I know there is a disparity of wealth because I have seen
12-year-old barefoot girls carrying baskets of rocks to a road construction
site and other 12-year-old girls in neatly pressed school uniforms, the
daughters of the military elite, being ferried around on a river in Rangoon
by navy gunboats.  Both groups were surrounded by armed soldiers, but for
different reasons:  In the former case, to make sure they got on with the
work; in the latter case to ensure their protection.
	All this is admittedly difficult to see from a cocktail party at the Strand
Hotel, which could be why Omae could write that "it is almost impossible to
find soldiers on the streets.  You feel as though you are not in a country
under military rule at all."
	This is not the only distorted view of Burma to be propounded by the
Japanese press.  Kohei Hashimoto, a Senior Research Fellow at the P.H.P.
Research Institute, wrote in last September's issue of Voice magazine that
pro-democracy advocates in Burma are "ignoring various steps which they must
pass through to reach a democratic society."  Hashimoto does not go into
much detail about what these steps are, but one of them is apparently to
live under the dictatorship of a military government.  The P.H.P. Research
Institute, as you may be aware, is sponsored by Matsushita Ltd. and
publishes venerable English language organs such as P.H.P. Intersect.
	These views could be dismissed as absurd if they were not appearing in such
prestigious publications and written by high-profile writers and apparently
having an effect on foreign policy.  The government, never willing to shrink
from the challenge of sucking up to military dictatorships, announced
recently that it would be resuming overseas development assistance loans to
Burma.
	The new policy sees to support the arrogant assumption of right-wing
writers:  that the Burmese people are too stupid to deserve democracy and
that they have to go through various steps before being awarded the
privilege of our support.
	History surely shows otherwise.
	In what way were the Filipinos ready for democracy in 1986 and not ready in
1976, after Marcos had looted the economy of around 30 billion dollars?  How
were the Argentinians more ready for democracy in 1982 than in 1972?
Democracy does not occur in those countries because they had passed the
necessary steps but because people got fed up with repression, dictatorship
and economic ineptitude and staged their own rebellions.
	Omae admits that the current Burmese regime rules by force after ignoring
the results of a general election in 1990 that overwhelmingly voted in the
opposition National League for Democracy (NLD).  He also admits that the
head of the NLD, Aung San Suu Kyi, has the backing of two-thirds of the
country.  But he believes she would be no good at running the country, and
the military repression is therefore justified.
	This line of logic begs the question:  Who is to decide if the leader of a
country is competent enough to remain in power or incompetent enough to be
ousted?  The generals?  Kenichi Omae?  Voters?  On the basis of that elitist
argument one could also say that Ryutaro Hashimoto is an incompetent leader
and ought to be replaced by a military junta, and that if Japanese voters
are stupid enough to vote for the Liberal Democratic Party they deserve to
have their vote taken away.
	Whoops!  Better not suggest the idea.  Omae might agree with me.