Asia's rich and powerful turn to ET for advice

04/08/2007 by Daily Telegraph

From the brutal generals who rule Burma to Thaksin Shinawatra, the new owner of Manchester City, when Asia's rich and powerful need advice they travel to Rangoon to see a soothsayer called ET.
A tiny, hunched, deaf-mute in her mid-40s, her real name is E Thi but, as her sister explained, she is universally known by a nickname which refers to her resemblance to Steven Spielberg's Extra Terrestrial.
She is said to be a key adviser of General Than Shwe, the leader of the military junta, who recently relocated Burma's capital for unknown reasons. Many believe that fortune tellers had their say in the affair.

Mr Shinawatra, who bought Manchester City Football Club last month, consulted her shortly before he was deposed as Thailand's prime minister last year. She is said to have told him to remain outside Thailand between September 8 and 22 to avoid bad luck.

If so, the advice was only half good. He was deposed by a military coup while he prepared to give a speech in New York on September 21.

Fortune tellers are enormously popular in this region, and ET's skills put her at the top of her profession.

The Daily Telegraph was lucky to get an appointment. ET was block-booked for the following two days by the Indonesian embassy on behalf of a visiting government minister. According to her sister, who acts as diary secretary and translator, Asian embassies - and their governments - are among her best clients.

When ET rushed into the room, took up a pen in her crooked fist and began scrawling prophesies, she did not disappoint. First she wrote the number 89702795, stating that it was the serial number of a $100 bill in my wallet.

Anyone in Rangoon who can afford her rates of £35 for a 30-minute session has a wallet full of dollars, but when there proved to be a note with the number 89702750 it seemed like a good start with just two digits wrong. For her next trick she accurately named the place where I was born.

It is not known whether General Sonthi, who toppled Mr Thaksin in last September's coup, took the example of Thailand's 1991 coup leaders by consulting ET first. But he is certainly superstitious.

His lucky number is nine and he announced his take-over at 9.39am.

The Burmese junta also places great importance on the number nine. In 1990 they held elections on 27 May (because two plus seven equals nine), but it did not help them. Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won a landslide, although the result was disregarded and the Nobel Peace Prize winner is under house arrest.

When the junta inaugurated their new capital at Naypyidaw in 2005 it was on an auspicious date amid a welter of lucky numbers. Last year when a Burmese mystic foresaw that Naypyidaw would crumble within two years the authorities arrested him.

In 1970 they moved the traffic from the left to the right hand side of the road on a fortune teller's say so.

Such superstition is common throughout Asia, whether in Roman Catholic Philippines, or Muslim Indonesia or Buddhist Thailand and Burma. In April the region's richest woman Nina Wang died in Hong Kong and left £2 billion to her fortune teller.

Last year in Hindu Nepal, the unlucky King Gyanendra took his fortune tellers' advice and stayed away from his capital as the country was rocked by demonstrations. After 19 days of crisis he was forced to give up his absolute powers.

ET concluded our meeting with some encouraging remarks about my financial prospects and then suddenly, as if shocked by an ill omen, leapt to her feet and scuttled from the room as abruptly as she had entered.

Her sister apologised profusely as I returned to my stash of dollars to pay her handsome fee.