Myanmar's leaders take to the
hills By Larry Jagan
BANGKOK - Myanmar's new capital at
Pyinmana by all accounts is up and running despite
officials unhappy with the strange move into the
country's central hills.
Since dawn
November 6, at a moment deemed astrologically
auspicious, convoys laden with government
paraphernalia and personnel have been rolling out
of Yangon for Pyinmana, some 400 kilometers to the
north.
"Due to changed circumstances, in
which Myanmar is trying to develop a modern
nation, a more centrally located government
seat
has become a necessity," was the official
explanation for the massive relocation.
All of Myanmar's government administration
will be moved to Pyinmana by year-end and be ready
for workers' families as well. Each ministry will
have a school attached, a local businessman
involved in the construction of the complex told
Inter Press Service.
"Administrative and
office buildings, as well as living quarters for
more than 5,000 people have been completed," he
said.
But thousands of civil servants are,
for now, separated from their families for lack of
amenities and staff are reported to be virtually
held prisoner within a fortress-like campus.
The first bureaucrats to arrive at the new
administrative center were dismayed. "There's no
water, no electricity and no windows or doors
fitted in the living quarters," a senior
government official told his family in Yangon over
the telephone. "I have to sleep in my office."
"There is nothing to eat, drink and
nothing to buy. Just nothing," another civil
servant told his wife. "My boss even told me that
he now understands what hell is."
Several
senior civil servants have taken early retirement
in the past few months, including the director
general of the Labor Ministry and senior members
of the Foreign Ministry. Many more are now
expected to try and retire or resign, but they may
not be allowed to, a Western diplomat in Yangon
said.
And the government has issued a
warning that civil servants who try to abscond
will be hunted down and treated in the same manner
as army deserters, an Interior Ministry source
said.
Privately, many are worried for the
fate of the side businesses and small dealings
they had built up in Yangon, using their contacts
in government.
Meanwhile, vast sums of
money have been channeled into building what top
General Than Shwe, the driving force behind the
relocation idea, has named "nay pyi daw" or
place of the king.
More than 30 building
companies have been taking part in the massive
construction effort, with each given a specific
project within the overall plan, said a
construction contractor who is building a
residential block.
The whole project is
costing millions of dollars, another contractor
said. "It's an open budget - no expense is being
spared," he said.
A sergeant in charge of
overseeing a part of the construction can
commission work worth a 100 million kyat
(US$10,000), without referring it to his
superiors, he added.
Some buildings have
been torn down and rebuilt at least three times
because a commander was not happy with the
finished work. "These people are so ignorant they
cannot read the architectural plans; they can only
decide when they see it constructed," the builder
said.
Mansions for senior generals,
government offices and national headquarters for
the country's ethnic groups and the powerful Union
Solidarity and Development Association (a
pro-government, social and political organization
founded in 1993 by the State Law and Order
Restoration Council) are also being built.
Bunkers, tunnels, a large military
hospital, apartments, airstrips and a golf course
also are being built, eyewitnesses say. And two
luxury hotels and two large supermarkets are being
constructed, an architect involved in the project
said.
At the end of the mass relocation,
government administration and military
headquarters will have been shifted to the 100
square kilometer complex at Pyinmana. Plans for
the move have been in the pipeline for years and
building started more than two years ago.
"This is typical of Than Shwe's
pretensions to be the new Burmese monarch," said
Win Min, a senior Myanmar analyst who lives in
Thailand. "Like all the Burmese kings before him,
he is building a new palace-capital for
posterity."
Ironically, Pyinmana served as
the hideout from where Aung San, father of
incarcerated, pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu
Kyi, led a resistance movement against the
Japanese Army, which occupied Myanmar during World
War II.
For months, Yangon had been rife
with rumors that the country's military rulers
were planning to retreat to the hills because of
fears of a foreign invasion from the sea. "The
planned retreat is essentially strategic," said an
Asian diplomat who regularly deals with Yangon.
The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003
reinforced the top general's fear that Washington
might attack Myanmar, analysts say. Myanmar's
military strategists have long argued that the
country's defenses were vulnerable to an attack
from the sea.
"Than Shwe has a bunker
mentality," said Win Min. "But the motive behind
this move is to make sure the military is in a
better strategic position to control the regional
commanders, the ethnic rebel groups in the border
areas, the future parliament and combat social
unrest throughout the country."
Foreign
embassies are likely to have to follow Myanmar's
government into the hills. For now, they have been
asked to fax all communications to Pyinmana,
although a liaison office will continue to
function in Yangon.
Ministers have been
dismayed at the lack of consultation and the
suddenness of the shift to Pyinmana. "Nobody
agreed to this move, I don't think even Gen Maung
Aye [slated to succeed Than Shwe] [knew] but we
all just shut our mouths," a senior military
officer said.
There is acute confusion
with citizens waiting to pick up their passports
suddenly finding the concerned office shifted 400
kilometers away. Prices of consumer goods, already
soaring because of the recent ten-fold increase in
petrol prices, are set to increase further.
"The whole thing is absurd," said a
Myanmar businessman. "The generals have made
another major blunder."
