Cyclone Nargis may have cracked open a country that has been under the snare of a military rule, but the Burmese junta appears firm as ever to hold on to its power.

These days, people in Burma are looking up at the sky, but they are not watching out for a storm. They are waiting for food and medicines after hearing from the radio that there will be an air drop from the US and French governments.

Had they looked up at the sky two weeks before, would they have known that a tragic storm was about to hit the impoverished country locked in a callous military rule?

As early as April 28, the India MeteorologIcal Department detected the storm and knew it was potent enough to turn into a cyclone. Two days later, information about a storm appeared in Burma’s media. It said nothing about the tidal surge. The authorities had no radar network to predict it. On May 1, the winds unexpectedly shoved Nargis (an Urdu word meaning daffodil) into a sharp eastward turn, straight into a stream of warmer, wetter air currents. Alerts were sent out, monitors flashed: Evacuate. But Burmese villagers and townsfolk did not hear the warning.

The cyclone made a landfall on May 2. The 15km-high funnel was at least 500km wide. It brought a tidal wave 3.5m-high which smashed into Higyi Island’s shore in the Irrawaddy Division at 215kmh. It was a Category Four cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. The onslaught lasted three days as the cyclone made its way 40km inland.

Rangoon and the low-lying areas comprise the rice bowl of the country, accounting for 70 per cent of rice production. The cyclone hit when the second rice crop was about to be harvested. The effects of the cyclone will create uncertainty for rice production in the months ahead. Most rice paddies outside Rangoon were covered with the remains of bamboo huts. More than 10 million residents of the delta area were estimated to have been adversely affected.

When air transport re-opened on May 5, Rangoon was in a state of shock and people were only starting to recover from the nightmare for which they had no warning.

As the first UN relief planes landed in the city early on May 8, humanitarian officials complained that the aid flowing into cyclone-devastated country was still encountering bureaucratic obstacles that threatened the lives of desperate survivors.

The official government death toll from the cyclone is 22,997, but Western diplomats in the country and others have given far higher estimates, perhaps exceeding 100,000.

John Holmes, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator for Burma, said the situation was becoming ”increasingly desperate” on the ground, with thousands of square kilometres still underwater.

”There is a real danger that a worse tragedy may unfold if we cannot get the aid, desperately needed, in quickly,” he said.

Four World Food Programme planes flew into Rangoon carrying 47 metric tonnes of high energy biscuits and 25 metric tonnes of emergency response equipment. The chartered aircraft came from Thailand, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates and Italy. However, officials say the distribution of food may take a few days to begin.

”It’s quite a business to get that food and get it to the delta. I don’t know how long it will take—it will take the shortest possible time anybody is going to achieve,” Holmes said.

He also warned that the thousands of unburied dead bodies could become a serious health hazard. “One concern is the corpses that are going to be around. They need to be managed, dealt with, buried or quickly disposed of because of the threat to health. And that is one of our most urgent worries at the moment.”

Oxfam has raised alarm about the potential spike in the death toll to the already high fatalities from the May 3 disaster. ‘‘With the likelihood of 100,000 or more killed in the cyclone, there are all the factors for a public health catastrophe which could multiply that death toll by up to 15 times in the coming period,’’ said Sarah Ireland, Oxfam’s regional director for East Asia.

The Burmese junta has so far allowed only World Vision, JICA and Unicef to assist cyclone victims. Unicef has already rushed three million water purification tablets to help some of the most vulnerable victims, the children.

The tablets, which were flown in a plane carrying other emergency supplies, has the capacity to ‘‘purify three million litres of contaminated water, enough for the needs of 200,000 people for one week’,’ Unicef said. ‘‘With many roads still blocked by debris and fallen trees, distributing purification tablets is quicker and more practical than attempting to distribute large quantities of portable water.’’

But Unicef admits that it is racing against time since its health specialists in the country have said that ‘‘20 per cent of children in the worst affected areas already have cases of diarrhoea and cases of malaria have also been reported’’.

During the weekend as Rangoon reeled from the shock, state television ran soaps or programmes with lots of singing and dancing. Those who had television reception in Bagan would not know of the calamity in Rangoon and the programmes depicted a very different picture from the reality that Burmese people were facing.

Eight days after the cyclone struck, the government held a referendum on the controversial new constitution.

The question on everyone’s minds is how the cyclone will affect politics in the country. Burma has recently seen two massive political demonstrations: in 1988 led by the students and last year’s saffron demonstration led by the monks.

The mass demonstration of 1988 was the result of sudden demonetisation of the currency in 1987 which led to a sharp rise in the price of rice from 5 kyat to 15 kyat per two kilograms and left millions impoverished. The saffron demonstration of September 2007 was largely a result of the government’s decision to lift petrol prices twice from 180 kyat to 1,500 kyat in 2005; and 1,500 to 1,800 kyat in 2007.

Economic hardship has been a major factor triggering major political movements in Burma. This time again, following the cyclone, the price of rice has shot up from 1,300 kyat per 2 kilograms. The price of a duck egg rose from 100 kyat to 250 kyat in less than a week. (Note: 1,000 kyat is roughly equivalent to US$1 but the official conversion rate is 6 kyat to $1.)

On May 5, vehicles queued to refill their tanks after petrol stations opened for the first time since the cyclone. The government has limited the sale of petrol to 3 litres per car per day. In a small lane close to Sule Pagoda in Rangoon, people were carrying empty containers to a nearby hospital, which is one of the government stations distributing water to the public. The government said electricity supplies would be out of service for one month. The public water supply is running but the water is brown. A young Burmese lady said the government’s relief effort was slow.

The cyclone—Burma’s worst natural disaster in living memory—has reinforced the image of the military as a force interested solely in perpetuating its grip on power, regardless of costs to the people it claims to protect.

In Rangoon, the old capital, people are venting their anger at the military authorities’ indifferent response to the disaster.

“Where were they (military) when we needed them most—to clear up the mess on the streets, provide shelter and water, and protect us when the storm struck,” a Burmese middle-aged housewife told IPS over phone, on condition of anonymity. “It took them a day to crack down on the monks (in September), but four days after the cyclone they’re still nowhere to be seen,” she added angrily.

Most people in Rangoon feel the same. “It’s the monks who have been leading the clean-up,” said an elderly retired civil servant. “God bless them.”

Pictures of soldiers removing fallen trees and clearing roads in Rangoon on the state-run television have further infuriated many in the city. “This is pure propaganda and it’s far from the truth,” e-mailed a Burmese journalist, asking not to be identified for fear of the consequences. “Why do foreign broadcasters show them too—Burmese government propaganda is a disgrace enough to journalism,” he fumed.

“I saw some soldiers getting onto a truck yesterday,” said a 50-year-old resident. “They had no sweat on their shirts despite what was shown on TV! My wife saw three truckloads of soldiers parked in front of a fallen tree, none of them got down to remove it,” he added.

Most of the city’s residents were reported to be too shocked to do anything other than try to survive and protect their families. In the outskirts of the city, across the river where the poorer working class lived, the flimsily built houses had all been flattened. Everyone in Rangoon was frantically searching for clean water, according to eyewitnesses.

The government belatedly realised that action is needed to prevent hoarding and price speculation. “We are coordinating and cooperating with businessmen. We appeal to entrepreneurs and businessmen not to cash in the disaster,” Burma’s information minister Major Gen Kyaw Hsan told a press conference.

But for most people in Burma this appeal simply added insult to injury, as they blame the government for the skyrocketing prices of staples—this was what gave rise to the massive street protests led by monks last year that were brutally suppressed.

“In Rangoon people feel they have lost everything and have nothing more to lose,” said a young activist student. A repeat of September’s anti-price rise protests is increasingly likely, especially if the government continues to disregard the main concerns of the people crippled by the cyclone.

“The military has shown its true colours that it has no concern for the plight of the people,” said Win Min, an independent Burmese academic based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. “This could easily be the final nail in the military’s coffin; it is now no longer ‘if’ but ‘when’,” he added.

There is much pressure too on Asean to do something. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand are prepared for rescue efforts that might be necessary but support from newer members like Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia has been conspicuously absent even though they are the junta’s biggest backers during normal times. The Philippines, meanwhile, is saddled with its domestic food crisis.

Days after the deadly cyclone struck, the Burmese people are still desperately awaiting supplies of fresh water, food, medicine and temporary shelter. While Western countries have put aside their political differences with the junta and focused on providing emergency relief, it has been the regime that has again placed politics ahead of the needs of the people. Tonnes of undelivered supplies are awaiting permission to be flown into the country from various airports in the region. Hundreds of international relief workers have been denied entry visas.

Neighbouring countries like Thailand are also bracing for repercussions including the increase of migrant workers. “It will have snowball impacts on other regions, even perhaps Thailand. Even though, we don’t see sharp increase of refugees, but economic migrants will come to Thailand as a result of this global disaster,” Aung Zaw, editor of Irrawaddy magazine, said.

People are also urging for Burma to open up to international aid.

“Kids die every hour because they have lost their parents from the disaster. We keep hearing reports that children who survive from this disaster are having symptoms of cholera and dengue fever,” Aung Zaw said.

“On the one hand, people urgently need food, shelter, clean water and assistance. On the other hand, they really need freedom,” he said. (By JEERAWAT NA THALANG, KAVI CHONGKITTAVORN, SHOBANA/ ANN/ AsiaNews)