The Joke’s on the Junta

A day after the verdict against pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the talk of the town in Burma is undoubtedly junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe’s theatrical “last-minute” intervention to reduce her sentence.

According to sources in Rangoon, the teashop jokes and sarcasm erupted as soon as state-run media aired the “Breaking News” of Than Shwe’s statement at 1:30 p.m. On Tuesday.

The “statement of mercy” scene could hardly have been more farcical had Ed Wood been directing it.

Pedestrians walk by wooden barricades with barbed wires erected by the police on August 12 in Rangoon a day after Burma's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was convicted by a court. (Photo: AP)

Moments after the judges had vacated the courtroom after handing down a three-year sentence with hard labor to the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the regime’s Home Minister Maj-Gen Maung Oo entered stage left and addressed the courtroom.

Reading a prepared statement from Than Shwe, the minister for home affairs said that as Suu Kyi was the daughter of national independence hero, Aung San, the junta chief had decided “to exercise leniency upon her.”

Than Shwe had, the assembled reporters and diplomats were told, decided to intervene and cut the sentence in half and to have it suspended to house arrest.

The statement also noted that Than Shwe had acted so that “there be no obstruction in the path to democracy.”

On hearing of Than Shwe’s supposedly magnanimous gesture on television or the radio, people around the country reportedly erupted with laughter.

A foreign staffer with an NGO in Rangoon said that when the news was read out on TV in the restaurant where he was sitting, people smirked.

“It was amazing that it actually came on TV and everyone got a chance to hear it first-hand,” he said. “Everybody laughed when the TV presenter said that Than Shwe himself had granted a reduction of her sentence.”

Speaking to The Irrawaddy, a Rangoon housewife said, “Than Shwe has obviously watched a lot of Chinese soap operas. Maybe he wants to be like the benevolent ‘people’s judge’ in Manchu dynasty episodes.”

On Wednesday, a teenage student in the city said, “We heard through the state media that ‘No one is above the law.’ But ‘baba gyi’ (a nickname, referring to the junta chief as ‘grandfather’) shows us that he is far above the law.”

A journalist based in Rangoon shared the same story. She said that many people are joking that Than Shwe acted like the superhero in a drama coming in at the last minute to save the beautiful actress.

Another joke on the streets is that the local authorities were planning to drain all the water from Inya Lake to stop intruders swimming across. However, Than Shwe gave the idea the thumbs-down because his favorite grandson, Nay Shwe Thwe Aung, could not find another lake in Rangoon to drive his speedboat.

Burma’s most famous comedian, Zarganar, who is currently in prison, once famously said, “All of my jokes are ones that I learned from my audience.”

And as if there weren’t enough material for gags and satire, when Burma’s state-run newspapers published the full text of Than Shwe’s intervention, the statement was dated August 10—one day before the verdict was announced.