For years, Myanmar watchers attributed the odd decisions made by the country’s military rulers to an influential class of government apparatchik: the astrologer bureaucrat.
Take the way the regime moved the capital from Yangon to Naypyidaw in 2005: on Nov. 11, at 11am, 1,100 military trucks ferried 11 military battalions and 11 ministries to a brand-new city carved from the jungle.
Similar advice in 1987, according to a report by The Christian Science Monitor, led the regime to demonetize certain banknotes (causing widespread financial hardship and helping spark the 1988 democracy protests), and to order the mass cultivation of a plant the military believed would sap democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s strength.
Sweeping reforms begun in 2011 have edged Myanmar, formerly Burma, closer to democracy; next year it’s expected to hold the freest general elections since 1960. But that hasn’t diminished the political influence of astrologers – it’s just changed their audience. No longer exclusive to a ruling elite, political astrology has been democratized, and is now a fixture of Myanmar’s vibrant new media industry, with astrologer columnists and commentators appearing in newspapers regularly. Call it the rise of the “astrologer pundit.”
Their predictions began appearing with the end of newspaper censorship in 2012, and are a part of the new era of press freedom. Yet the phenomenon also suggests newspaper readers here are willing to accept a form of fatalism inimical to the spirit of democracy: why bother voting if the stars determine what is so?
By far the most famous of these seers are San-Zarni Bo and Zayar Ko, two men with opposite political views. San-Zarni Bo discovered astrology as a political prisoner. Zayar Ko, attended Myanmar’s version of West Point military academy.
Their forecasts frequently betray their own political sympathies. “People want bad news about the government and good news about the opposition,” says San-Zarni Bo. His office mingles Buddha statuettes with computer equipment that enlarges handprints during palm-reading sessions. He’s developed smart-phone apps that deliver horoscopes to subscribers in Myanmar and Thailand, and has daily broadcast gigs.
He is also a staunch supporter of Ms. Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy is expected to do well in next year’s parliamentary elections (he says she politely ignores his advice about lucky dates). Journalists writing for the biggest local newspapers seek him out regularly and quote him with reverence.
