Multi-player chess eases boredom for the Burmese elite
By Michael Backman
The Age (March 22 2002)
Strange things are happening in Myanmar. Relatives of Ne Win, the 92-year-old former dictator, have been arrested, ostensibly for plotting a coup, and he has been sealed off in his mansion. And yet it has long been thought that Ne Win was still pulling the strings.
Arrested were Ne Win's son-in-law and his three sons. The head of the airforce and the chief of police were sacked.
Was a coup really being plotted? Regardless, the real story is almost certainly about infighting among the elite over who gets what economic spoils. It certainly is not about lofty considerations of national direction among members of the police force.
The Burmese business world is a murky one. The government is in business, the military is in business and so too are many senior government figures and their families. There are even some businessmen in business.
The playing field is small and, thanks to boycotts and sanctions, it is getting smaller. It is inevitable that squabbles will break out. Members of the elite are falling over themselves as Myanmar's pariah status starts to bite.
Ne Win's daughter and her husband are prominent in business in Rangoon. They own a company called Associated Business Consultancy Services (ABCS), which matches foreign investors with local partners. It is listed on the official website of the US Commercial Service as a possible first point of contact for US companies wanting to invest in Myanmar, despite the US refusal for many years to appoint an ambassador to Rangoon.
The daughter and her husband also have a local consumer goods distribution business and have in the past imported Renault buses from France. But their most prominent investment is a 20 per cent stake in the 80-room Nawarat Hotel on Insein Road in Rangoon. It is one of Rangoon's newer and most up-market hotels. Its opening was greeted with relief by the contingent of bored diplomats and expatriates because it housed the city's first, and for a long time, only night club. It soon became a haven for prostitutes.Until then, night clubs had been banned by Ne Win.
The other shareholder is Singapore's Hotel Properties, a company controlled by Ong Beng Seng.(Hotel Properties also owns the Concorde Hotel in Surfers Paradise. Ong's wife Christina used to own the DKNY boutique at Melbourne's Crown Casino.)
Last year, Win's daughter was set to unveil Skylink, a new GSM mobile telephone network in Rangoon and Mandalay in northern Myanmar. It didn't happen. A breakdown in her relationship with the Telecommunications minister, who was a shareholder in the project, brought about his sacking and detention. He was also questioned about a separate business dispute between his son and one of the Win family. Apparently, their business was in black-market currency trading.
To further complicate matters, one of the Wins is reputed to head an organised crime group called the Scorpion Gang. The son of the sacked police chief is reputed to head the rival White Snake Group.
Rangoon is a remarkable place filled with remarkable characters. I once met the former mistress of Ne Win, whose daughter happened to be married to a German arms dealer. We sat in her parlour and enjoyed afternoon tea served to us by her servants. She insisted on regaling us with several of her favourite wartime love songs, a process that involved several costume and jewellery changes, and her rolling around on the floor in a provocative manner, or at least as provocative as you can be if you are in your late 60s.
So, life in Rangoon goes on. However, despite all the noise about human-rights abuses, Rangoon has an air of quiet civility. If members of the elite are not treating one another to afternoon tea, they are taking turns at sending one another to jail.
They tend not to execute or torture one another: it is more an elaborate game of alignment and realignment. Consider Aung San Suu Kyi. No jail or worse for her. She was kept under house arrest, although mansion arrest would be more accurate. She was detained in her grand residence on the shores of a lake in the nicest part of Rangoon. And now, its Ne Win's turn for house arrest, in his residence on the same lake.While the elite play out their slow-motion chess game, life for most of Myanmar's 42 million people is one of poverty, hardship and dashed expectations.