KUALA LUMPUR — At minute zero of a two-day visit to Malaysia, Myanmar's leader Min Aung Hlaing — formerly the country's top soldier, installed in April as civilian president — stepped onto a red carpet at the host capital's arrivals line, in search of greater international legitimacy, a substance that cannot be stored, banked, or reheated, and is dispensed here in ceremony, by the metre. The host's prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, had pledged to do "whatever possible" to ensure Myanmar's acceptance in the regional community. By our count, the pledge was honoured entirely in carpet.
Our observation began at the first footfall. At minute one, the military band played the visitor's anthem. At minute four, the honour guard presented arms. At minute nine, the carpet had dispensed its first twelve paces of acceptance. At minute eleven, host and visitor shook hands for six seconds, four of them for the cameras, two of them, by our measure, sincere. At minute fourteen, by local measure, the visitor was legitimate. The carpet ran forty metres. No one else measured it. We checked.
Our station asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs how the transfer is performed. "Where the legitimacy was before the aircraft door is not a protocol question," said Datuk Faridah Osman, the ministry's Chief of State Protocol. "It travels with the visitor, like luggage. We do not open luggage. Our responsibility begins at the carpet, and the carpet is always fresh." A member of the visiting delegation, who asked to be identified only as senior, noted that the region keeps a waiting list — "the queue of the queue" — and called two days a fast queue. "We checked our place in it before boarding," the senior added. "We had moved up one line."
The dispensation renews daily. A two-day visit therefore produced two days of acceptance at an observed rate of one carpet per day. At the official dinner, the dominant primate of a corporate troop photographed the handshake from table seven and posted it within four minutes, generating a second, smaller dispensation that reached further than the carpet. The post drew 214 congratulations, three of which we verified as ministries.
Outside the venue, a satay vendor named Ravi Nathan described the mechanism unprompted. "A guest is a guest," he said, turning skewers. "You grill what he brings you. You do not ask the meat where it has been." The skewers were excellent.
At minute 2,880 the ground crews rolled the carpet and returned it to storage, ready for the next arrival. The acceptance, our instruments confirm, was left standing. It keeps.
