Naypyidaw (pronounced nay-pee-DAW) is Myanmar’s new capital, built in secret by the ruling generals and announced to the public two and a half years ago, when it was a fait accompli. It would be easy to write off the move to Naypyidaw as an inconsequential caprice of the generals who have been in power for 46 years. But the transfer of the entire bureaucracy to this relatively remote location, where malaria is still endemic and cellphones do not work, has drained the country’s finances and widened the gulf between the rulers and the ruled. When Cyclone Nargis swept through the Irrawaddy Delta last month, it killed about 130,000 people and damaged buildings in Yangon. But the generals and civil servants in Naypyidaw felt only a zephyr, residents say. The leader of the junta, Senior Gen Than Shwe, did not visit the area devastated by the cyclone until May 18, more than two weeks after the storm. Isolation appears to be what the generals want. The main reason for the move may have been that the junta felt unsafe in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, which is near the sea. The real threat, the generals often tell the people, comes from abroad. Steve Marshall, the representative in Myanmar for the International Labour Organisation, a United Nations agency, said the Burmese Army regarded British, American and French warships arriving to offer assistance to victims of the cyclone as a hostile force. The government is widely assumed to have built Naypyidaw with revenue from the sale of timber, gems and natural gas. But the total cost of building Naypyidaw remains a mystery. But Sean Turnell, an expert on the Burmese economy with Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, said the consensus estimate was around $4 billion to $5 billion. In a country where per capita annual income is $28- less than 80 cents a day- opposition groups say the money could have been better spent. The contrast between the grandiose architecture of Naypyidaw’s buildings and the poverty of the surrounding countryside is jarring. The generals have vowed to hold “multiparty, democratic elections” by 2010, but opposition groups are skeptical that the elections, if they occur at all, will be free and fair. The junta ignored the results of the last election, held in 1990, in which its proxy party was badly defeated by the party of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader.
