So far the military has not tried to halt the momentous and unexpected (to them) power shift. These changes accelerated in November 2015 when veteran reform advocate Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won 80 percent of the available seats in parliament in the first nationwide elections in 25 years (and the first to actually take power since the 1960s). The new government is expected to take action on two issues (ethnic unrest and Chinese encroachment) the military was reluctant to tackle, as was the current elected (but still military dominated) government.
The military was always in favor of getting the economy growing rapidly, something decades of military rule had prevented. But many military leaders had prospered during the dictatorship because they could be corrupt (to get rich) without fear of prosecution. The new government is under a lot of pressure to crack down hard on corruption in order to increase economic growth and reduce the widespread poverty. Such a crackdown would also cause tensions with China, which has, for over a decade, invested heavily in the tribal north via corrupt deals with the military. Unwinding all these unfair (especially to local tribes) deals will be painful for the Chinese as well as prominent Burmese military leaders and businessmen. (Courtesy of strategypage.com)
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