Word: juntas
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...earthly mayhem. So when Cyclone Nargis tore across the country on May 2 and 3 - killing tens of thousands of people and leaving hundreds of thousands more homeless - Burmese couldn't help but note the curious timing: exactly a week later, on May 10, the country's thuggish ruling junta was set to hold a constitutional referendum, a step toward what the military has called a "discipline-flourishing democracy." Critics dismissed the plebiscite as nothing more than a political ruse to legitimize the military's grip on power, noting that the proposed constitution reserves a hefty chunk of parliamentary seats...
...deadly as the cyclone itself. And estimates of how many people were killed by the storm and an accompanying tidal surge could spiral far higher. On May 7, the senior U.S. diplomat in Burma, Shari Villarosa, said the death toll could exceed 100,000, nearly five times the junta's estimate at the time...
...Crack Opens Could there be a silver lining to the cyclone's clouds? For decades, outsiders have searched for a way to pry open Burma's secretive regime. So paranoid are members of the junta about any outside influence that in recent years they have severely curtailed movements by foreign aid workers, forcing organizations like the French arm of Doctors Without Borders to abandon the country. When the 2004 tsunami swept over Burma, the generals refused any outside help. This time, though, the military announced it would welcome foreign aid. Three days after the storm, a trickle of donated food...
...Politics of Disaster After first announcing that the constitutional referendum would take place as scheduled, the junta did finally decide on May 6 to postpone the plebiscite until May 24 in the hardest-hit townships. Initially a state-run newspaper said there would be no delay because the people of Burma were eagerly looking forward to the chance to vote. But, says Aung Zaw, a Burmese in exile who edits the Thailand-based Irrawaddy newsmagazine, "what the people in Burma are eagerly looking forward to is the military government bringing them food and water and shelter...
...place that the cyclone spared was Burma's new administrative capital, Naypyidaw, which was carved out of the jungle by the ruling junta in 2005. Burmese civil servants who had to move from Rangoon to the new capital were given no explanation for the shift. But some local journalists in Rangoon speculated that junta leader Than Shwe had been swayed by soothsayers who predicted that civil unrest and a natural disaster would soon strike the city of roughly 5 million. In September, the monk-led protests made the first part of the prophecy come true; the cyclone fulfilled the second...