The watershed year for Myanmar - reflections from 2012

What a difference a year made! The year 2012 will long be remembered as a watershed in Myanmar’s modern history. The April parliamentary elections saw the revival of Myanmar’s opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), and the return of its leader, democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, to politics after years of forced isolation. The year 2012 also witnessed sweeping political reforms, from the release of political prisoners and the establishment of a national human rights body, to the easing of press censorship and the introduction of laws allowing public demonstrations and labour union strikes. The economic reforms were equally impressive, the most recent and significant of which was a foreign direct investment (FDI) code removing the country’s restrictions on foreign ownership of joint ventures….