Free Republic

General Ne Win, the former president of Burma (now Myanmar), who died yesterday aged 91, ruled his country with an iron fist for 26 years, dragging it into poverty-stricken isolation.Ne Win, who seized power in a coup in 1962, was xenophobic, capricious, superstitious and fascinated by the occult “science” of numerology. Nine was his lucky number: important events were staged on dates whose numbers, when added together, made nine; and in 1987, after deciding that all banknotes should be divisible by nine, he introduced the 45-kyat and 90-kyat notes. The result was that Burmese who had hoarded 100-kyat notes lost...