The government of Aung San Suu Kyi has been in power in Myanmar for just over a year. But many people have become disillusioned with its performance. For the urban elite, the country seems directionless, amid an acute policy vacuum.
"There are no policies, plans or strategy," said Kyaw Kyaw Hlaing, a prominent Myanmar businessman and political commentator. As a result, for much of the past year, there has been deep inertia, with the business community in particular frustrated by continued delays in announcing a detailed economic policy.
But despite this growing frustration, the grassroots support for the National League for Democracy (NLD) remains strong. Recent by-elections also reflected continued backing for the government, except in ethnic areas, where the NLD has lost substantial ground to local parties. These ethnic parties are loosely aligned with the government but are adamant that The Lady should be doing more to bring peace and political change to ethnic areas.
In the by-elections held at the beginning of April, the NLD retained 10 of the seats in which it stood; 19 seats in all were contested.
Of the 12 seats in the national parliament, the NLD won eight but conceded four -- one to the military-aligned Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), the rest to the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), which supports the government.
But the NLD faired much worse in polls for seven regional parliamentary seats -- winning only one in Shan state. Most of the seats were lost to ethnic parties -- the SNLD won four -- and a solitary seat that went to the USDP. The other seat, for the small Kayah State assembly, went to the All Nationalities Democracy Party -- also very loosely aligned with the NLD.
Significantly, the NLD vote remained relatively firm -- well over 60% in the national parliamentary by-elections, but turnout was very low -- in many places just half that of the national polls in November 2015. Pundits said this reflected apathy rather than alienation, and most significantly, they note there was no unexpected surge in support for the "opposition" USDP.
But what is clear is that ethnic voters, the popular upwelling that propelled Aung San Suu Kyi to power has certainly evaporated. "I hope The Lady listens to the voices of the electorate," said Ye Min Oo, a businessman and senior NLD member. "For clearly there are issues to be addressed."
One major problem that has dogged the government is the high expectations that the landslide victory of the NLD created. "Expectations were too high, partly because the extent of the victory surpassed even the best predictions," said Zeya Thu, a commentator with The Voice magazine in Yangon. But while the hoped-for change has not taken place yet, no one wants a return to authoritarian rule -- not even the army itself, he added.
When the new NLD government took office inlate March last year, the military and former ministers in the USDP expected Aung San Suu Kyi to fail. "I give her six months, a year at the outside," a minister from the previous regime said at the time, summing up prevailing sentiment.
The outgoing regime's obstructionist approach to the handover of power did not help. "We didn't know whether we would be allowed [by the military] to take power right up until the day before the new president was sworn in," a government insider told me at the time.
The six-month transition period was fraught, with the outgoing team preventing government officials from handing over files and policy papers to the NLD team. They even banned top civil servants from talking to members of the incoming transition team. In mid-March 2016, hundreds of boxes of files and documents were suddenly released, giving the NLD no time to read them and try to prepare policies. Some information has still not been released, a government insider told me recently.
Still, after more than a year the government is firmly in charge. But the frequently heard complaint that it has little to celebrate is a superficial assessment. Despite the limited resources at its disposal when the NLD took office, the machinery of government has kept moving. It has been a struggle to keep the country solvent, despite some substantial aid packages from foreign donors, the Asian Development Bank, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. That has been made all the more difficult by the sharp drop in foreign direct investment, reflecting the wait-and-see approach taken by many prospective investors.
Not many outsiders are aware that in its last few months in office, the former administration of Gen Thein Sein virtually bankrupted the government; ministers overspent the budget by threefold, especially during an unseemly eleventh-hour spending spree in March 2016. The budget deficit skyrocketed to 4.6% of gross domestic product from 1%.
The outgoing ministers blew out the current account and left the new government with a crippling liability -- a hastily arranged loan from China for US$300 million at 4.5% interest: with the kyat exchange rate falling over the last year the cost of this loan has appreciated enormously.
So just keeping the government and public finances on track has been a herculean task. But at the same time Aung San Suu Kyi had a strategic vision for the future, unlike her predecessors. She wants to make the institutions of government transparent and stable. Much time has been spent behind the scenes on public service reform. Though this was initiated by the previous government, the NLD's plans are much more far-reaching.
Already hundreds of new civil servants have been recruited from among university graduates to fill lower management positions. This "new blood" will move up the bureaucracy, bringing a fresh mindset and a much-needed problem-solving approach to public administration.
"The top layers of the bureaucracy are the problem," Hanthar Myint, head of the NLD economic committee, explained to me a few months after the government took office. "The Lady knows the problems in the public service and the bottlenecks in the bureaucracy, but decided not to challenge them too soon."
But the practice of "letting sleeping dogs lie" may be about to end. Many senior public servants with longstanding ties to the military are likely to be axed in the coming year; some will be allowed to retire and others made redundant.
"A major shake-up is in the pipeline for these guys," said a senior member of the government on condition of anonymity. "But everything will be done according to the law," he stressed, with no arbitrary dismissals.
One of Aung San Suu Kyi's top priorities has been how to organise the government while building trust. "She is very strategic, placing trusted people in key positions," said Tin Maung Than, an academic who is working on public service reform. "National unity is the new banner. It's a divided society, so stressing human rights and democracy will only heighten disunity and lead to greater instability."
During celebrations in March to mark International Women's Day, Aung San Suu Kyi appealed for patience, as one year is only a short time. Her efforts, supporters say, have been intended to lay the foundations for stability that will ensure future democratic change will be irreversible.
"We still desperately need to hear the government's detailed economic policy; its failure to announce it has limited economic activity in the last 12 months," Sy Win, a prominent Myanmar businessman, told Asia Focus. "But nevertheless the future is very bright."
For a start, the foundations have now been laid for an economic take-off in the coming year. "Foreign investment and economic development will boom in the next six months," Finance Minister Kyaw Win assured businessmen recently.
Transparency and accountability have improved markedly as well. "There's been a remarkable decline in corruption, as a result of The Lady's lead," Luc de Waegh, senior adviser with the strategy consulting group Roland Berger in Myanmar, told Asia Focus.
The government, and Aung San Suu Kyi in particular, have spent a year laying the foundations for reform, stability and a stronger democracy. While expectations may have been tempered, they are going to have to deliver more substantial and concrete results in the next 12 months.