Myanmar’s junta holds referendum despite cyclone crisis

YANGON, Myanmar – Myanmar’s military rulers held a referendum Saturday aimed at solidifying their hold on power while brazenly turning cyclone relief efforts into a propaganda campaign. In some cases, generals’ names were scribbled onto boxes of foreign aid before being distributed.\nHuman rights organizations and dissident groups have bitterly accused the junta of neglecting disaster victims in going ahead with the vote, which seeks public approval of a new constitution.\nThe referendum came just one week after Cyclone Nargis pounded the Irrawaddy delta, leaving more than 65,000 people dead or missing. Nearly 2 million others were left homeless or in need of food, shelter and medicine.\nAye Aye Mar, a 36-year-old homemaker, looked frightened when asked if she thought anyone would vote against the\nreferendum.\n“One vote of ‘No’ will not make a difference,” she whispered, her eyes darting around to see if anyone was watching. Then she raised her voice to declare: “I’m saying ‘Yes’ to the constitution.”\nThough international aid has started to trickle in – with two more planes organized by the U.N. World Food Program landing at Yangon’s airport Saturday – almost all foreign relief workers have been barred entry into the isolated nation. The junta says it wants to hand out all donated supplies on its own.\nBut with roads blocked and bridges submerged, reaching isolated areas in the hard-hit delta has been made all but impossible. The military has only a few dozen helicopters, most small and old. It also has about 15 transport planes, few of which are able to carry massive amounts of supplies.\nLong lines formed in front of government centers, where minuscule rations of rice and oil were being distributed. Elsewhere, people clustered on roadsides hoping for handouts. The words “Help us!” were written in chalk on the side of one home.\n“Please, don’t wait too long,” said Ma Thein Htwe, 49, who waited with dozens of other women and children at a monastery in Kungyangon for her ration of rice.\nKo Zaw Min, 27, said not enough aid was reaching his community. Each family was given just over a pound a day.\n“I want to build my home where it used to stand, in the field over there,” said the farmer, who lost his 9-year-old son and a 1-month-old baby in the disaster. “But I have nothing.”\nDespite international appeals to postpone the constitutional referendum, voting began Saturday in all but the hardest hit parts of the country.\nAs lines formed, state-run television continuously ran images of top generals, including junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe, handing out boxes of aid at elaborate ceremonies.\n“We have already seen regional commanders putting their names on the side of aid shipments from Asia, saying this was a gift from them and then distributing it in their region,” said Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, which campaigns for human rights and democracy in the country.\n“It is not going to areas where it is most in need,” he said in London.\nIt has been 18 years since the last poll, and many people had no idea how to vote. Some asked each other or officials, “Where do I go?” or “What do I do?” as they walked into curtained booths to cast their ballots.\nMyanmar has been ruled by military regimes since 1962. The current junta seized power in 1988, throwing out the country’s last constitution.\nThe referendum seeks public approval of a new one, which the generals say will be followed in 2010 by a general election. Both votes are elements of what the junta calls its “roadmap to democracy.”\nBut the proposed constitution guarantees 25 percent of parliamentary seats to the military and allows the president to hand over all power to the military in a state of emergency — elements critics say defy the junta’s professed commitment to democracy.\nIt also would bar Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained leader of the country’s pro-democracy movement, from public office. The military refused to honor the results of the 1990 general election won by her National League for Democracy party.\nSome 27 million of the country’s 57 million people were eligible to vote, although balloting was delayed for two weeks in the areas hardest hit by the May 3 cyclone.