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YANGON—In this cyclone-ravaged country where most people
have more important things on their minds, such as the
daily struggle for fresh water, food and shelter,
Myanmar’s ruling generals sent their people to the polls
Saturday to vote on a constitution that opponents call a
cynical attempt to maintain the junta’s grip on power.
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 handpicked 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, 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
generals went ahead with the referendum despite a
warning Friday from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
that Myanmar’s rulers should “concentrate their very
limited resources, time and energy on saving lives and
reconstructing their country. Then, I think, they can do
the referendum at a later date,” he added.
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.
Government workers say they were told that voting “no”
in the referendum would cost them their jobs.
But the
digital revolution has given opponents a relatively safe
way of urging a “no” vote. Cell phones were beeping a
barrage of instant messages as people in Yangon asked
family and friends in other parts of the country to
reject the draft constitution.
The
military is making its latest power grab as anger grows
over the generals’ slow response to the emergency and
their refusal to allow a full-scale international relief
operation.
Ramming
through an unpopular constitution as people are trying
to cope in the aftermath of a killer cyclone risks
igniting unrest on the scale of last year’s protests
against fuel-price hikes, which sparked the biggest
protests against the junta in 20 years.
In 1993,
three years after rejecting Suu Kyi’s election victory,
the junta opened a convention to write a new
constitution that the generals promised would restore
democracy and preserve national unity. Opposition
members complained that the military manipulated the
process to guarantee its control over the country after
promised elections in 2010.
In
addition to the ban on Suu Kyi, the constitution would
bar thousands of her supporters from public office
because they have been charged with crimes under the
regime’s draconian security laws, which include a ban on
gatherings of more than five people.
The
constitution explicitly says the military must “be able
to participate in the national leadership role of the
state” and would give the commander in chief the power
to appoint one-quarter of the members of both houses of
Parliament, which would give the military veto power
over any legislation.
The
generals also would have a role in choosing the
president and two vice presidents, and some Cabinet
posts would be reserved for the military. (Los Angeles
Times News Service) |
