Cyclone unlikely to spell disaster for Myanmar junta

By Ed Cropley - Analysis

BANGKOK (Reuters) - After 46 years of unbroken military rule, many people both inside and outside Myanmar think it will take an act of God to get rid of the generals.

Inevitably, the former Burma's frustrated exile community are seeing the catastrophic destruction wrought by Cyclone Nargis as just such an event, hoping the economic fallout and misery will spark either a popular uprising or split within the military.

Neither is likely, analysts say.

Many of Myanmar's deeply superstitious 53 million people are likely to blame the storm on "bad karma" from the despotism of junta supremo Than Shwe, Burmese and European analysts said on Thursday.

But those living in the heavily populated Irrawaddy delta will be far too busy in the months ahead rebuilding their lives and homes to worry about rising up.

"People are absolutely preoccupied with survival -- food, water, health, their relatives, getting their jobs back, rebuilding their houses," former Australian ambassador to Yangon Trevor Wilson said.

"Politics is the last thing on their minds at the moment."

With the memories of the bloody suppression of last Septembers' monk-led protests still fresh in people's minds, one taxi driver put it even more succinctly.

"There won't be demonstrations," he told a Reuters reporter in Yangon, or Rangoon as it used to be called.

"People don't want to be shot."

LUCKY STARS?

Ironically, the cyclone -- Asia's worst since 143,000 people were killed in Bangladesh in 1991 -- might even end up bolstering Than Shwe's status because of his decision to move the capital to Naypyidaw, 400 kms (250 miles) north of Yangon, in 2005.

At the time everybody thought he was mad, but with 100,000 people feared dead in the Irrawaddy delta, and Yangon strewn with rubble and fallen trees, some might say it was either a very lucky, or very prescient, move.

Whatever the reason, the junta's escape from much of the destruction is only likely to confirm in the minds of its leaders that they have an almost supernatural mandate to continue to run the country.

"It is said that Than Shwe's astrologer told him to move the capital because Rangoon would suffer a calamity," said Derek Tonkin, a former British ambassador to neighboring Thailand.