Myanmar law students report for JURIST on challenges to the rule of law in their country under the military junta that ousted the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. On Sunday afternoon, when the Category 5 cyclone Mocha made landfall in western Myanmar and Bangladesh. , one of our correspondents who must remain anonymous offered her perspective on the storms and political change.
It’s very very windy here now. We still don’t know what will happen overnight. Mostly after wind, rain and a storm, power outages and wifi failures are very common. We lost contact with relatives in Rakhine at 11am this morning because the electricity is completely out there and the MPT mobile phone tower has fallen due to the wind.
It’s not about this bad weather, but isn’t it a coincidence that Cyclone Nargis happened in May 2008 in Myanmar? [editor’s note: Cyclone Nargis killed an estimated 130,000 people in Myanmar]? After that, there was also a major political change. This is the 2008 constitution referendum that has trapped us all under the false democracy that has always intended to initiate a coup like this as we move closer and closer to federal democracy.
We’ll just have to see how things go in the morning. In 2008, what the military did was to hold a referendum for their golden constitution and lie to the country that they got more than 90% of the votes when it was already so difficult to write down the list of dead and missing people. We will see in 2023.
