Burma in Limbo - Part 8

U Nu on Time's Cover.

BORN on 25 May 1907 Prime Minister of Burma U Nu was well over forty in early 1950s and he was becoming wiser and veering towards right in his political orientation after years of ruling Burma. 

He used to be a closet Communist or at least a Socialist just a few years ago. Victory to Communism; Defeat to Burmese Communists - was what he yelled out at departing Than Htun on the very day CPB was expelled from AFPFL in December 1946.

Maybe he was well aware of the old adage ‘If one is not a Communist at 20 one is heartless but if one is still a Communist at 40 one is brainless’.

He was really sick of blatant corruption rapidly eating away the fortunes from the state-owned enterprises. And basically almost all large-scale economic enterprises in Burma were state-owned after years of overzealous nationalization as a legacy of Aung San and his leftwing extreme-nationalists. This translated extract is what he wrote in his autobiography Saturday Born.