Trained by the Cadre in deafness, able to attract worldwide disgust while staying on the script. Loathsome is a word.
Myanmar's Generals Say Vote
Must Proceed Despite Devastation
By JAMES HOOKWAY
May 9, 2008 11:10 a.m.
BANGKOK, Thailand – Myanmar's generals -- who have impeded international efforts to aid more than a million survivors of a devastating cyclone -- are now urging the country's citizens to be "patriotic" and vote for a new constitution that critics say will legitimize and perpetuate the military's grip on power.
With millions of dollars in emergency aid for Myanmar stalled on airport tarmacs around the world waiting for permission to enter the country and hundreds of relief specialists waiting for visas, the reclusive ruling junta appears bent on enhancing its power no matter what the cost.
By the government's official count, at least 63,000 people are dead or missing in the wake of the cyclone that tore through the country last weekend. Up to 1.5 million are homeless and in need of food, water, medicines and shelter, United Nations and other relief agencies estimate. But amid the chaos, the military government is urging people to vote in a referendum Saturday to adopt a new constitution which the regime says will nudge Myanmar a little further along what it calls its road-map to democracy.
Myanmar pro-democracy activists and exile groups have ridiculed the referendum as a sham designed to further entrench the power of the armed forces, which seized power in a coup in 1962 and has repressed criticism and dissent -- sometimes by force -- ever since.
Among other measures, the draft constitution says key government ministries overseeing defense, national security and border control will be reserved for military officers. Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader who has been detained under house arrest in Yangon for 12 of the past 18 years, would be effectively barred from seeking elected office because her two sons, who once were Myanmar nationals, are now British citizens.
Many critics contend the referendum should be postponed to enable Myanmar to focus on averting a greater tragedy in the flooded delta of the Irrawaddy River, which bore the brunt of the storm. The military has postponed the vote two weeks in the affected areas, but the devastated region is unlikely to recover much during that period.
"Two weeks isn't enough," says Zin Linn, a spokesman for a U.S. based government in exile, the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma. "Lists of eligible voters have been washed away and people are still trying to recover the bodies of the people who have been lost."
On Friday, state-run media in Myanmar instructed people in the rest of the country to go out and vote, even as they struggle to come to terms with the scale of the tragedy. "If you are patriotic and you love your nation, you must give an affirmative vote," state-run television said.
Academics, diplomats and other people who study Myanmar closely say junta leader Senior General Than Shwe's insistence on holding a referendum -- as well as his reluctance to allow foreign, and specifically American, aid teams into the country -- reveal the deep-seated paranoia which runs through his government and his commitment to staying in control. In a characteristic move, the junta said in a statement Friday that it was grateful for the limited aid that had been flown into the country so far, but added that Myanmar authorities should be left to distribute it.
Paul Risley, a spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program described the Myanmar's refusal to issue visas to aid workers as "astonishing."
Experts on the country aren't surprised. They say the decision to push ahead with the referendum which could enhance the military's power, while they are blocking foreign relief assistance, is typical of the junta's attitude to the outside world.
Some analysts think the refusal to grant visas to foreign aid workers is linked to the referendum. "They think that if they let all these people into the country, then they will never leave," says Pornpimon Trichot, a Myanmar specialist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. "And I think they are particularly worried about having lots of foreigners around when they are conducting the referendum."
There is a pervading and long-standing mistrust of all things foreign among Myanmar's military elite.
"The Burmese military is incredibly wary of the West and America in particular," says Monique Skidmore, a professor at the Australian National University. "They fear Western and especially American culture will undermine Burmese mores."
The presence of foreign workers also might curb the regime's ability to respond if there is another series of pro-democracy demonstrations, like those last September in which at least 31 people were killed.
Another Myanmar scholar at the Australian National University, Kevin Wilson, says the military are unlikely to risk anything which weakens to their position.
Gen. Than Shwe, who is 75-years-old, and other top leaders are steeped in a decades-old mistrust of the outside world. When the army seized power 46 years ago, it immediately cut trade ties with other countries. Foreigners were expelled and then-military strongman General Ne Win set about creating a Burmese brand of socialism, putting the army in control of the country's largest businesses. While other Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia boomed through the 1970s, '80s and '90s, Myanmar, once one of Asia's wealthiest countries, descended into poverty and isolation.
Gen. Than Shwe, an expert in psychological warfare and a veteran of the country's ethnic insurgencies, took over the ruling junta in 1992 and set about perpetuating the idea that only the armed forces could hold together this diverse nation of 135 different ethnic groups and several guerrilla wars.
"This is the idea that really drives them," says David Mathieson, a Myanmar expert with the New York-based Human Rights Watch group. "They think they are patriots who can somehow bind the country together and the younger officers and soldiers are kept apart from the rest of the society and indoctrinated with this belief."
In recent years, Gen. Than Shwe appears to have become increasingly wary of civilians. In 2005, the junta abruptly decided to move the country's capital from Yangon to the remote town of Naypyitaw, more than 300 kilometers to the northeast. And the military insisted on moving its administration immediately, even though the new site was still under construction and lacked basic amenities.
In the mid-1990s, the government began drafting a new constitution, with a view to holding nominally democratic elections in 2010.
Saturday's referendum on the draft constitution offers ordinary citizens their first chance in years to have their say on political plans for the country.
Diplomats in Yangon say they have seen a proliferation of graffiti urging people to reject the constitution since the cyclone hit. Exiled dissidents such as Mr. Zin Linn, information minister for the U.S.-based National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, are predicting a large 'no' vote, driven in part by fury over the military's sluggish response to the cyclone.
"But we worry that the government will manipulate the results," Mr. Zin Linn says.
Write to James Hookway at james.hookway@awsj.com
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