News Digest

For Myanmar political predictions, locals look to the stars

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.”

Myanmar is in a very eventful, unstable period. When they say something in the news is going to happen, we’re happy.

Ko Ko, a 68-year-old retired geologist

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? Myint Zaw, a Yangon business leader and avid news reader, cautions that political astrology can easily devolve into propaganda, becoming a platform for views cloaked in the movement of the planets.

I believe in astrology. I don’t believe in astrologists.

Myint Zaw, a Yangon business leader