There’s no shortage of big news in Myanmar. Will Aung San Suu Kyi be able to run for president? What will happen with the controversial education law? Is the government going to make peace with Kokang rebels?
But the story that put social media users into a tizzy on Thursday wasn’t a story at all, at least in the conventional sense. It was about an umbrella, or rather, an umbrella that nobody could see.
After disembarking from a plane for a visit to Kawthaung in the southwest, an official that the BBC identified as deputy minister Su Su Hlaing, who works at the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, is seen walking with an entourage.
The image was uploaded to the Ministry of Information’s Facebook page, but followers quickly noted something a tad askew. Behind the official, a man appears to be holding his arm in the air for no clear reason. On the ground is a large, round shadow, leading sleuths to connect the dots and assert that there had once existed an umbrella in this photo, leading to further speculation that it had been deliberately taken out.
The image was pulled from the Facebook page, but screen shots inevitably captured it and one user even reposted the shot in the lengthy comments thread on the ministry’s page, which included such zingers as “I want to buy magic umbrella.”
The BBC floated the theory that in Burmese culture, it’s embarassing for a man to carry an umbrella for a woman, but a colleague of ours says the issue is basic political PR. The official, or whoever took the umbrella out, didn’t want to put on airs.
But would anyone have cared? Apparently not.
One commenter on Facebook said that “we don’t mind someone giving you an umbrella, but whoever created a magic umbrella is a joke.”
