The Show Must Go On

By NEIL LAWRENCE / RANGOON
The Irrawaddy News

A man and a woman ride a trishaw carrying bamboo building material
in front of a pagoda and a large uprooted tree in Rangoon. (Photo: AFP)

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.

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.

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.

At polling stations in Pegu, just beyond the range of Nargis’ trail of destruction, officials waited idly for voters to turn up. Similar scenes were reported in Mandalay, Burma’s second largest city, where people were more interested in organizing relief efforts for cyclone victims than in responding to the junta’s calls to ratify its charter.

Five days later, on May 15, the regime announced a 99 percent turnout, with 92.4 percent voting in favor of the skewed constitution. Similar results were proclaimed two weeks later in Rangoon and Irrawaddy divisions, where the loss of life and scale of damage inflicted by Nargis was so immense that it forced the junta to declare a temporary suspension of the referendum.

If the generals get their way, military rule, in one form or another, will be here to stay. And that could prove to be a political catastrophe of the same order as the disaster that has wiped out countless lives in the Irrawaddy delta. Nearly half a century of military misrule may have turned Burma into a nation of survivors, but it has also pushed it precariously close to becoming a failed state. Burma has long been a disaster waiting to happen, and the worst may be yet to come.

If the post-cyclone debacle has proven anything, it is that the regime is incapable of handling any situation that it can’t manipulate to serve its own purposes. And with the referendum out of the way, the junta did just that, stage-managing a Potemkin relief mission in the delta.

One Western diplomat noted that “military efforts in affected areas doubled or quadrupled after the referendum.” A week later, it was evident where much of this energy was being directed. After denying foreigners access to the region for two weeks, Burmese Foreign Minister Nyan Win escorted the top US diplomat in the country, Shari Villarossa, on a tour of the delta. Villarossa, the chargé d’affaires at the US embassy in Rangoon, was unimpressed.

“It was a show. That’s what they wanted us to see,” she said in an Associated Press interview.

Just as the junta’s referendum has been rejected as a sham by all but a handful of government ministers from countries with substantial economic ties to Burma, it is difficult to look upon the regime’s relief efforts with anything other than a jaundiced eye.

State-run television images of cyclone victims meekly receiving donations from generals who came to “comfort” them contrasted starkly with scenes in areas where the military presence was minimal. On the road to Kungyangone, a town in the delta disaster area, for instance, trucks carrying privately donated food and clothing from Rangoon and other parts of the country were greeted with cheers.

But as ordinary Burmese rushed in to fill the vacuum left by the military’s inadequate efforts, new constraints were placed on their freelance charitable activities. According to witnesses, many of these aid convoys were blocked at police checkpoints, while others were allowed through only after paying bribes.

Nonetheless, private aid efforts continued, often spearheaded by Buddhist monks. According to Burmese aid workers who were carrying out independent relief efforts in the hardest-hit areas of the delta, some cyclone survivors had fled regimented government-run camps to seek food and shelter in monasteries. The victims were traumatized by the cyclone, they said, and the military buildup in the area did little to lessen their terror.

Ironically, it was in the days immediately after the cyclone, when the regime’s leadership was too preoccupied with preparations for the referendum to respond to the crisis, that unofficial relief efforts were easiest.

“Collaboration with the government was good for the first few days,” said a Western relief worker who has been in Burma for several years. “When we spoke to officials, they said ‘Go, go in!’ because they had no idea how to respond.”

But that changed as the regime came under mounting pressure to open up to outside assistance. Instead of issuing visas to foreign experts, the regime imposed more restrictions on those already in the country. According to a Burmese employee of an international nongovernmental organization (INGO), soon after the referendum, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned members of the foreign aid community and directed INGOs to “make donations through the government or get out (of the country) within one week.”

Foreign aid workers based in Burma were inclined to comply.

“This is not the time to fight with the government,” said one foreign relief worker who has been in the country for several years.

“The regime is not monolithic,” he added, noting that despite the official line, some groups had received permission to distribute aid directly to the victims.

But monolith or not, it was clear that as the regime’s chain of command reasserted itself, the top generals showed more interest in co-opting international aid and goodwill than in cooperating with the outside world.

In the delta, some cyclone victims said they knew that the regime was blocking international aid, while in Rangoon there were persistent rumors that soldiers were selling goods from foreign donors in markets near the city’s international airport. Although it was difficult to confirm these claims, they served as a whispered expression of resentment at the junta’s handling of the crisis.

Despite the growing frustration, however, there was little to suggest that the country was ready for another bout of unrest. With memories of the ruthless suppression of last year’s demonstrations still fresh in everyone’s minds, the desire for a renewed push to call the ruling generals to account seemed as weak as support for the junta’s referendum.

“Our government is very good at controlling revolutions,” said one studiously apolitical Burmese aid worker employed by a major INGO, dismissing the idea that a popular uprising would make life any easier for the country’s long-suffering people. “There is still a lot that we can do in the country,” she insisted. “Something is better than nothing.”

Many Burmese relief workers appear to view the government in much the same way as they regard poverty or disease: as a scourge whose effects can be mitigated, but not eliminated. But asked if she considered the draft constitution “better than nothing,” the aid worker replied: “If someone tells you to take poisoned food, do you say that it is better than no food at all?”