George Orwell in Shooting an Elephantsaid that in Myanmar “a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes”. As an historian by training, I am usually fairly reluctant to predict things. But today I am even more reluctant to predict very much, because Myanmar's future is less predictable now — even the very immediate future — than at any time since September 1988, when, as is well known, mass popular demonstrations nearly ended decades of military or military-backed dictatorship. Most people in this room are also familiar with the events of the past several months. We had elections in November 2010, the first multi-party elections in over twenty years, elections that were extremely controversial, with allegations of widespread vote fraud, particularly in Yangon. These were elections held under a new constitution, which reserves 25 per cent of the seats in national and local-level legislatures to the armed forces, as well as control of security-related ministries. They were also elections in which the junta-backed party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party or USDP, enjoyed a huge institutional and financial advantage, and in which many of the new and much smaller opposition parties were able to contest only a limited number of constituencies, in large part because they simply did not have the resources to contest more. And they were elections that the National League for Democracy (NLD), headed by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, chose to boycott as inherently not free and not fair, and taking place under a constitution the NLD did not accept.

Since those elections, which led to the USDP winning a clear majority of seats, not only in the national legislature but in nearly all the local — State and Regional — legislatures as well, a number of things have happened. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself was released from several years under house-arrest, the new legislatures were convened in January 2011, and a new government was formed, taking office in March 2011, with retired General Thein Sein as the new president. About the same time, Senior General Than Shwe dissolved the old junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC); appointed a new and much younger commander-in-chief of the armed forces; and removed himself from all public office.