Excerpt: **"The announcement of the new flag was made on state television just prior to the ceremonies, which were supposed to take place simultaneously all over the country.
"‘We received the instruction to bring down the old flag and to fly the new flag at 3pm,’ said an education officer in Pathein township in Irrawaddy Division, who added that shortly before the ceremony his office still had not received its replacement.
“The 2008 constitution pushed through by the military called for fresh national symbols, including a new flag whose colors of yellow, green and red would stand for solidarity, peace and tranquility, and courage and decisiveness. Still, the abrupt release of the new flag came as surprise.”**
Nothing like lots of advance notice! Personally, I liked the old flag much better.
Great. Now everyone will think Burma’s in Africa somewhere. Additionally, I doubt that white star will contrast very well with the yellow at the top; they should have outlined it with something, black or dark blue being the obvious candidates.
I suppose at some level it’s appealingly simple, but it’s also derivative (what, another horizontal tricolor?) and therefore not especially distinctive.
(I shouldn’t underestimate, there might be, but I hang out with erudite vexillologists, usually.)
[obligatory national anthems reference from the Dope’s resident anthematologist]The anthem is also changed to, according to the news. I haven’t had any word yet on what the new one is, but I’m working my contacts to find out posthaste.[/obligatory national anthems reference from the Dope’s resident anthematologist]
The new flag seems very reminiscent of the flag of the “State of Burma” from World War II, which is generally regarded as a Japanese puppet state. Just checking Wikipedia and Flags of the World, I don’t see anything to indicate that the wartime flag had any deeper roots in pre-War Burmese history (I mean the yellow-green-red horizontal tricolor with something in the middle; the peacock on 1943-45 flag clearly has deeper roots in Burmese vexillological history).
Is this deliberate? How is the Japanese-backed “State of Burma” regarded locally? Does the ruling junta consider it to have been some kind of valid national liberation government, as opposed to a puppet of the Imperial Japanese Army?
This is just a guess, but knowing these guys like I do, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that some fortune-teller or feng shui expert told them to do this. The precise time to change is a give-away, although usually it’s not that exact, but rather something like 3:01 or 2:28pm.
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