That Uneasy Feeling

Rangoon, the leafy capital of Burma, has sprouted a bit of a night scene. There are many new eateries, including a stylish Japanese restaurant, and dance clubs in shiny hotels now cater to tourists, businessmen and affluent locals. These days, though, the streets of the city are darkened, deserted and eerily quiet after sundown. People are fearful that there will be trouble, explains a hotel receptionist.A sense of impending trouble can be felt during the day too, as thick as the tropical humidity. Last week, some 200 students gathered near Rangoon University, shouting pro-democracy slogans and waving the red flag of the National League for Democracy, the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. Onlookers cheered, but riot police swiftly disbursed the rally and loaded students and even a few bystanders onto trucks. A smaller demonstration erupted afterward at the Yangon Institute of Technology, which also was broken up. They were the first such rallies since two weeks of demonstrations at the end of 1996 and a possible sign that the eight-year standoff between Suu Kyi and Burma's military regime is entering a more tumultuous phase.That, apparently, is how the generals see it: at midweek they closed all approaches to the gilded and diamond-encrusted Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma's most sacred shrine. Suu Kyi gave a famous speech there in 1988, and authorities don't want it to become Rangoon's own Tiananmen Square. They also summoned two of Suu Kyi's deputies and officially warned them to avoid acts which will undermine stability and peace.It's a standoff that neither side is likely to win. Suu Kyi is demanding that the ruling junta belatedly recognize her party's victory in 1990 parliamentary polls, which would make her the country's leader. The time is not only ripe, she said in a recent taped address smuggled out to Radio Free Asia, but in fact it is long overdue. But the generals have no such plan. After releasing Suu Kyi from six years of house arrest in 1995, they have ignored her pleas for a power-sharing dialogue in the apparent hope that she will fade into irrelevance. (Suu Kyi has consistently avoided a call for a popular uprising, fearing the violence that could result.) The military regime also started liberalizing the economy, hoping a trickle of prosperity would placate the populace.But the economy is on the verge of collapse, largely because of the political deadlock and Suu Kyi's pleas to the outside world to withhold investment from Burma. Foreign-exchange reserves are estimated to be down to $50 million, barely enough to pay for a week's imports, and inflation is running at about 30%. The official exchange rate of the kyat, Burma's currency, is six to the U.S. dollar, but private money changers give 360 for a greenback. Electric power fails constantly in the capital. Three of Rangoon's new luxury hotels have asked for government permission to close, which was denied.Meanwhile, Suu Kyi is being forced into greater assertiveness. Two months ago, she demanded that the parliament elected in 1990 be convened by Aug. 21, a deadline that passed unheeded. The lower echelons of the party and the students feel a last-ditch effort is needed if the party is to survive, says a Rangoon diplomat in touch with Suu Kyi. They forced her into it. After setting the deadline, Suu Kyi decided to travel to the countryside to drum up support from her idle and demoralized followers. In two attempts to visit Irrawaddy district, a main area of support, authorities halted her on a small bridge 32 km from the capital. After six days on the bridge in July, she was forced back to Rangoon in poor physical shape. On the second attempt, she spent 13 days in a Toyota TownAce van, finally returning to the capital in an ambulance. But the government made every effort to deride her. It sent a beach umbrella and plastic tables and chairs to the bridge and issued a press release saying it had also provided imported snacks and cassettes by Madonna and Michael Jackson. She has been spending most of her time inside her air-conditioned camper reading novels, it announced.That's part of a long-running effort to paint Suu Kyi, who lived for decades in Britain, as a troublemaker foisted on Burma by the outside world. It hasn't worked, as the student protests and a barricaded capital prove. Suu Kyi hopes that a collapsing economy will force change, and the International Monetary Fund has reported that Burma's medium-term outlook is grim. The same, unfortunately, can be said about the political situation. The junta is said to be split between pragmatists and an even tougher faction that favors going back to the hermetic isolation of the Ne Win decades. (Ne Win himself, now 87 and in supposed retirement in Rangoon, still has clout in that group.) Suu Kyi's party, meanwhile, is showing signs of a split: during her second standoff on the bridge, nld chairman U Aung Shwe met with a top general, an event featured on the government's nightly news broadcast. Burma's downward slide continues, but its pace might be picking up.