Are rulers of Burma serious about change?

The new Burmese government is being observed by the international community for signs that reformers led by President Thein Sein can bring about a real change towards democracy and reconciliation.

Outsiders see something is happening in the country, which was under military rule for a long time, but wonder if such movements are real.

"I think everybody who follows this country knows that there have been stops and starts, that expectations have been dashed, that things only go so far, and then they stop or they reverse themselves. And I really urged the leadership to prove the sceptics wrong," Derek Mitchell, the US special representative and policy coordinator for Burma, said in Rangoon last week when he wrapped up his visit.

The United States, together with the European Union, United Nations and Association of Southeast Asian Nations, is now engaging Burma in the hope that the new government, which was installed to replace the junta in March, would dedicate itself to political reform and national reconciliation.

Over the past months since he came to power, Thein Sein has done many "positive" things for political reform. The most significant was his hour-long meeting with Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi last month in the capital of Naypyidaw.

Outsiders did not know exactly what they talked about but a diplomatic source expected that it was not a normal conversation. The meeting seemed to have set some guidelines for the political role of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD), the source said.

Despite boycotting the November election, Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD is not being isolated from Burma's politics and reform process. Senior representatives from the US, EU and UN who visited Burma over the past weeks allocated equal time to meeting with her as with government officials.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, who holds the rotating chairmanship of Asean, of which Burma is a member, said yesterday the group would weigh Aung San Suu Kyi's opinion before making a decision on whether to allow Burma to chair the group in 2014 as requested.

Marty said he would visit Burma next month to explore the possibility of the country assuming the chairmanship of the grouping.

Burma was extremely keen to do so, he said, adding that that could be an incentive to encourage more democratic reform.

Besides meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, Thein Sein has done many other things to show that he is steering the country toward reform. He began to tackle the economic hardships caused by the kyat currency crisis by easing many economic restrictions.

The new government listened to economists and employed economic tools to rescue the fragile economy, rather than exercise power to crack down on people it regarded as economic manipulators, like it had done before.

The new government opened up some Internet access for people in the country just before the release of a report by media watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists, which claimed that Burma was among the world's most media restricted countries.

Outsiders might receive a lot of confusing signals from Naypyidaw, since the power arrangement between the reformers and hard-liners has not yet been settled, diplomats and observers said.

President Thein Sein, who is regarded as the leader of the reformer camp, might not wield full authority to push forward his plan toward reform and reconciliation. Thein Sein tagged along with Lower House Speaker Shwe Mann and Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing, who were always countered by hard-liners in the regime led by First Vice President Tin Aung Myint Oo alongside Information and Culture Minister Kyaw Hsan, Finance Minister Hla Tun and Upper House Speaker Khin Aung Myint.

They go up against each other on many issues including development projects such as the Myitsone dam, which Thein Sein opposed due to the environmental impact, while his opponent supported it, according to Irrawaddy online.

Diplomats are worried that their fighting might jeopardise the plan to cultivate reform and reconciliation. The burning issue for Thein Sein is the economy. Unless he can overcome the economic difficulties, there could be an uprising and military intervention to bring Burma back to square one, diplomats said.