NAYPYITAW, Myanmar—Myanmar’s remote capital was built in part as a tribute to the country’s ancient royal rulers. The name Naypyitaw means “The Abode of Kings,” and it comes with an 840-acre parliament complex and 20-lane highways snaking past a presidential palace.
But as the new parliament convened on Monday, the country’s fresh intake of lawmakers after the first democratic elections in decades are finding that their accommodations aren’t quite as resplendent.
“Life as a member of parliament is just like life as a college student,” said Khin Maung Soe, a new member of parliament, sitting by a dormitory bed lined with a thin foam mattress covered with printed fabric from the 2006 Disney movie “Cars.” “We get up at a stipulated time, we live in a small hostel, we go everywhere in groups.”
Newly elected lawmakers often have a hard time finding somewhere suitable to live in their nations’ capitals. In Washington, some lawmakers have been known to make a virtue out of camping in their offices to show they aren’t part of the mainstream political machine.
Myanmar’s new MPs, though, the bulk of them from Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, have to put up with more than most. For the next five years, many will bunk down in rooms like Mr. Khin Maung Soe’s: spartan rooms, 15 by 15 feet, in long rows of pastel-green dormitories. The dorms were originally built to provide opposition lawmakers a place to stay.
The rooms are a far cry from the sprawling compounds and mansions where lawmakers from the outgoing military-linked government lived. The former ruling party headquarters was deserted on a recent visit.
“It isn’t a good feeling, being here,” said Kyaw Thein, one of the few Union Solidarity and Development Party lawmakers who won a seat in November’s election, who now lives in the party headquarters. “We had so many seats before, but now we have so few, and this building is now so empty.”
But many of the mansions remain home to former generals who are choosing to retire here.
Furnishings in NLD’s dorms are little more than wooden beds lined with an inch-thick foam mattress and a flat pillow. The small bathrooms attached to the rooms lack water heaters. Reddish-brown water comes sputtering out of the taps. There are no stoves or facilities for cooking.
“It isn’t so great for the old MPs who live here, because the weather gets so cold sometimes and there is no hot water,” said Yan Lynn, a new NLD lawmaker who just moved in to the guesthouse. He reckoned his room “a bit small.”
The MPs aren’t compelled to stay in the dormitories. But with a salary of $3,880 a year, it is their only realistic option. Many, like Ms. Suu Kyi, were political prisoners or activists, and some don’t have much in the way of private financial means. Building their own homes as some members of the outgoing military government did isn’t an option.
Kan Chon, a member of the Naypyitaw city council, a government body that has jurisdiction over the dormitories, said it has been providing additional furniture in the rooms, like shelves, and has started providing meals to MPs living there. “Any big improvements would have to wait until the next government is in power, because of budget concerns,” he said. The NLD government will fully take over in April.
Worst of all might be Naypyitaw itself.
The country’s old military regime relocated the capital here from the main population center around Yangon, about 200 miles south, in 2005, back when many NLD lawmakers and Ms. Suu Kyi herself were still locked away. The idea was to build a monument to what the old junta believed would be its unwavering power.
Though much has changed since then, the capital still hasn’t attracted the kind of crowds the army expected. Its oversize buildings dwarf the few people on the streets, most of them gardeners tending to the manicured plants and trees that line the sidewalks. Its highways have just a handful of cars on them at any one time.
There are some attractions to divert the new MPs, many of whom haven’t visited Naypyitaw before.
There is a gem museum showcasing chunks of jade and blood-red rubies mined from the country’s north, and an herb garden displaying medicinal plants from all over the country.
Then there is the water park where a fountain lights up at night and a zoo where the air-conditioning in the penguin enclosure wasn’t cold enough, killing all 10 birds over the course of two years. A zookeeper said they never took to Naypyitaw’s hot and dry weather.
Many new MPs say it feels eerie.
“The roads and buildings here are so different from anything I have seen in the past,” said U Myo, a new lawmaker who visited the capital for the first time last week. “There are no people here, but I came from a place that is highly populated, where many people lived together. Now it feels very isolated.”
Some lawmakers from Ms. Suu Kyi’s party who won their seats in by-elections a few years ago say Naypyitaw just takes some getting used to.
“For me, since I have spent such a long time in prison in much more difficult conditions, it isn’t too bad,” said Thein Swe, a lawmaker who has lived in these guesthouses since 2012. He was a political prisoner who spent about 10 years in prisons for his allegiance to Ms. Suu Kyi.
Many lawmakers said they were so happy to be able to serve in government that the strangeness of their new homes was secondary. They said they would enjoy having Wi-Fi or a library in their guesthouses.
Still, there is some good news for the NLD. Improvements are being made to the parliament building, which boasts a new cafe selling dim sum and a souvenir shop. Their guesthouses too are slowly being improved.
“They have started to upgrade the bedding now that we are in government,” said Thin Pa Pa Mying, who splits her time between Yangon and the Naypyitaw guesthouse where she accompanies her father, an NLD lawmaker elected in the earlier round of by-elections.
“For example we now have new silicone pillows. Before they were like one-time-use objects,” she said. http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-myanmar-elected-officials-head-to-the-dorms-1454436841
Comments are closed.