As ordinary Burmese displayed resilience in the face of Cyclone Nargis, their rulers showed they weren’t going to allow a major disaster to upstage their farcical referendum
FORTY-six years of military rule have prepared Burma well for Cyclone Nargis, the most devastating natural disaster to hit the country in living memory.
Less than a week after the deadly cyclone struck on May 2-3, the former capital, Rangoon, was slowly crawling back to its feet—deprived of water and electricity, and littered with filth and fallen trees, but moving forward with inexorable dignity.
Sidewalk hawkers and teashops—ubiquitous symbols of the subsistence economy that supports the majority of ordinary Burmese—wasted no time getting back to business. Meanwhile, barefooted children played soccer in a narrow lane next to Trader’s Hotel, using piles of fly-covered garbage as goalposts, as passersby hastened to get on with their lives.
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| A man casts his vote for the constitutional referendum in cyclone-hit Hlaing Thayar Township west of Rangoon on May 24, two weeks after the first round of referendum voting in most of the country. (Photo: AFP) |
But this hard-won resilience—a product of decades of economic mismanagement by successive military regimes—has its limits. There were also signs that under the gritty surface lay an even grittier reality: An article in
The Myanmar Times, a semi-official weekly newspaper, reported a mysterious rise in demand for razor wire, in a city noted for its low crime rate; a middle-class woman complained of routine theft at the meditation center where her mother resides; and a Singapore-based Burmese businessman, after listening to a comment on the remarkably good-natured Burmese response to adversity, smiled, and then lowered his voice in warning: “Don’t walk alone after nine o’clock at night.”
After a pause, he added: “The people have good hearts, but they need to eat.”
Meanwhile, a little more than seven months after a brutal military crackdown on monk-led protests grabbed international headlines, another side of the country’s ruling regime was on full display. Rangoon residents said that in the immediate aftermath of the cyclone, soldiers were conspicuous by their absence. Days later, they finally made an appearance, clearing trees from wealthy neighborhoods or along some of the city’s strategically important main thoroughfares.
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| Burma’s junta leader Snr-gen Than Shwe, center, along with top military brass, inpects relief supplies provided to cyclone-affected families at a showcase refugee center on the outskirts of Rangoon. (Photo: AFP) |
“Our government neglects the people. And when the people complain, the government bullies them,” said one businessman, succinctly describing the twin principles of Burmese military rule: inattention to the needs of ordinary citizens and a readiness to crush dissent at a moment’s notice.
For Burma’s ruling junta, the only kind of catastrophe that matters is one that threatens its hold on power. So it came as no surprise to most Burmese that as Rangoon struggled to restore a semblance of normalcy and the Irrawaddy delta remained a scene of nightmarish devastation, the regime pressed ahead with a referendum to approve a constitution intended to strengthen its political stranglehold.
The draft constitution, which will reserve 25 percent of political positions for the military, is the junta’s answer to all that ails Burma. More specifically, it is designed to nullify the results of the last electoral exercise in the country—the 1990 general election that the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won by a landslide.
Eighteen years later, the regime is still struggling to come to terms with its humiliating defeat. Ignoring the outcome of the 1990 vote and resisting calls for a handover of power, it has tried to impose an alternative political process on the country. The May 10 referendum was hailed by the state-run media as a crucial step in this “seven-part road map” to “disciplined democracy.”
Never mind that nobody else seemed to care.
