I Want My MRTV
Kerry Howley | May 13, 2008, 11:19am
The list of things the Burmese government has bungled over the past two weeks includes its own propaganda campaign:
AS HUNDREDS of thousands of refugees waited for emergency relief yesterday and for their leaders to act, the Burmese junta went ahead with a national referendum aimed at keeping its members in power.
The Burmese generals were visible all right. State television showed them handing out boxes of the small amount of aid allowed in from neighbouring Thailand. Unwittingly, it also showed that the Burmese leadership had plastered their own names over the true origins of the food aid to fool their own people into believing that the emergency relief supplies had come from them.
I'd rather consider this the work of a disgruntled MRTV employee. Endless MRTV-3 segments featuring officials shaking hands in celebration of their bang-up job on cyclone relief are here and here.
Meanwhile, the government is holding a vote on its 194-page constitution, available only in languages 40 percent of the population cannot read. According to the New York Times, officials have pushed cyclone refugees out of schoolhouses in order to use them as polling places. In this, too, the regime has managed to gum up its message machine. The country's "roadmap to democracy" is widely regarded as Than Shwe's attempt to soften criticism of his government, and the constitutional referendum is probably a ploy for international legitimacy in response to pressure from the region. It...doesn't seem to be working at the moment.
Cosmotarian Overlord | May 13, 2008, 1:08pm | #
John, not sure I get your point. The situation in Myanmar IS WORSE than after Katrina that is why I know we will do a even better job of fixing the country if they will just let us help them.
I was looking on the state department website:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35910.htm
and I was horrified to see they stopped taking any loans from the IMF or World Bank since 1998. I was equally horrified to see that they have increased food production greatly since they have done this and were actually exporting quite a bit by 2007.
Even more importantly the CIA states that Burma is the 2nd leading producer of "illicit" opium production in the world....this illicit production has got to be stopped!
The humanitarian Bush is doing his part to fight these people:
President Bush announced on September 25, 2007 that the United States would tighten existing economic sanctions on the regime leaders and their supporters. On October 19, 2007, President Bush expanded sanctions to include individuals responsible for human rights abuses and public corruption, as well as individuals and entities who provided material or financial support to designated individuals or the Burmese military government. Australia, Canada, and the EU also have imposed additional economic sanctions on the Burmese regime in response to the crackdown.
Burma became a member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in 1952, the International Financial Corporation (IFC) in 1956, the International Development Association (IDA) in 1962, and the ADB in 1973. Since July 1987, the World Bank has not made any loans to Burma. Since 1998 Burma has been in non-accrual status with the Bank. The IMF performs its mandated annual Article IV consultations, but there are no IMF assistance programs. The ADB has not extended loans to Burma since 1986. Bilateral technical assistance ended in 1988. Burma has not serviced its ADB loans since January 1998. Burma's total foreign debt now stands at over $7 billion.
