Soothsayer orders new capital

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By Nick Meo


BURMESE bureaucrats en route to a new capital city that has been hacked out of the jungle were told to leave Rangoon on the orders of the personal astrologer to the country’s dictator, Senior General Than Shwe.

Although government employees had expected a move from the old capital for nearly two years, most learnt of the order to go only at 6.30am on Sunday. They were told to leave their families behind, pack their belongings and join convoys moving about 200 miles north to Pyinmana, the city that only a year ago was little more than a collection of straw huts and rice paddies.

The timing was believed to have been chosen as auspicious by astrologers. Moving the seat of government to an easily defensible valley surrounded by jungle is the latest sign of paranoia exhibited by a pariah military regime that fears both invasion by the United States, which has branded it an outpost of tyranny, and an uprising by its own downtrodden populace.

A senior soothsayer may also have advised building a new centre of power, as Burma’s kings frequently did in the past. Astrologers play a key role in Burmese life and have prompted some of the strangest and most disastrous episodes in the country’s recent past.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1862022,00.html