Myanmar votes on constitution
The regime insists that the vote to approve the new constitution, held in parts of the country that weren't affected by last weekend's devastating storm, is part of its road map to "discipline-flourishing genuine multiparty democracy."
But critics charge that the constitution, drafted by a 54-member commission hand-picked by the junta, is a stacked deck: mandating a role for the military in the government and banning detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from running for office because she once was married to a foreigner.
Amid images of voters casting ballots, state-run television broadcast video of junta leader Gen. Than Shwe and other generals handing out boxes of relief aid to cyclone survivors. In case anyone missed the point, the boxes were plastered with the generals' names.
The military regime, which has been in power since 1962, has refused to grant visas to most foreign aid workers eager to get into the disaster zone, assess survivors' health and housing needs and coordinate the delivery of medicine, food, shelter and building materials.
The junta postponed the referendum in Yangon, the country's largest city, and the rest of cyclone-hit southern Myanmar. It plans to call people in those areas to vote May 24.
The people of Myanmar, also known as Burma, have not voted in nearly two decades. The last elections were in 1990, when Suu Kyi stunned the regime by winning in a landslide; the generals annulled the results and jailed many of the victors.
Criticizing the regime is a crime punished with a stiff jail sentence, and ordinary people rarely have anything good to say about the generals. So those willing to talk about the vote in Yangon on Saturday spoke on condition they not be named.
"We've never experienced this kind of thing before, so people are afraid," one young man said. "People have heard all sorts of rumors, like they'll be watched by closed-circuit TV cameras, or the regime will have some other way to find out how they vote. And then punish anyone who voted 'no.' "
They have good reason to worry about challenging the junta's will. At the end of March, 30 members of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy held a peaceful protest in Yangon wearing T-shirts with the word "no." Three days later, security forces detained five of the marchers.
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