BANGKOK - Disregarding the disaster caused
by Cyclone Nargis, Myanmar's military rulers are
bent on holding a constitutional referendum on
Saturday, said to be designed to enhance the
junta's grip over the country.
"The relief
efforts are being hampered by the junta's
obsession with getting the referendum vote over
and done with," a Western diplomat based in the
former capital Yangon told Inter Press Service
(IPS) on condition of anonymity.
According
to the Myanmar government, over 70,000 people were
killed and 30,000 more are missing or presumed
dead due to the cyclone last Saturday. Local
Myanmar aid officials believe
that
the
death toll could rise to over a quarter of a
million. At least 2 million people have been left
homeless.
"The government's attitude is
that the referendum is the top priority and the
cyclone is an inconvenience; we believe any
government's priority should be the humanitarian
response rather than the referendum," the diplomat
said.
Undeterred by the desperate
conditions facing nearly half of the country's
population concentrated in Yangon, the country's
commercial center, and the Irrawaddy Delta to the
east - Myanmar's rice bowl - the regime continues
to call on the people to endorse the new
constitution on Saturday.
"To approve the
state constitution is a national duty of the
entire people, let us all cast a 'Yes' vote in the
national interest," state-run newspapers continue
to urge.
People are also being exhorted by
state media to "resist foreign intervention",
though it is not clear whether this refers to the
poll process or to desperately-needed
international cyclone relief.
Paul Risley,
spokesman for the United Nations' World Food
Program (WFP) in Bangkok, said on Thursday that
the junta was yet to give clearance for relief
flights to land in Myanmar. According to Risley,
flights were still waiting to take off from Dubai,
Dhaka and Thailand with high-energy biscuits.
The irony is that very few people have
actually seen the draft constitution. In Yangon,
it sells for at least 1,000 kyat, the equivalent
of US$1, in a country where 80% of families live
on less than $2 a day.
The cost varies in
other parts of the country - from the equivalent
of $2 a copy in Mon state, near the border with
Thailand, to more than $4 in the predominantly
Muslim areas of Arakan and Rakhine states in the
west near Bangladesh, according to Sai Khuensai
Jaiyen, director of the Shan Herald Agency, a
dissident publication based in northern Thailand.
The government is hoping for a unanimous
vote. That is inconceivable unless the results are
rigged - something most diplomats in Yangon
believe is highly likely. There are no official
opinion polls available and public sentiment is
hard to gauge.
Yangon's taxi drivers - a
good weather vane of public opinion - interviewed
before the cyclone struck were of one mind: little
is going to change by having a new constitution.
"What's the point of voting, they [the military]
just order everyone around and don't care what
people think," said Min Thu, a taxi driver in
Yangon. "If they promise to reduce the cost of
petrol, then I would certainly vote."
"I'm
going to vote 'yes' because I'm tired of the top
brass running the country, and doing it very
badly," said a colonel who wanted to remain
anonymous for safety reasons. "It's time to get
them out of government and a new constitution is
the only sure way of doing that," he added.
Impoverished farmers in Myanmar's once
prosperous rice-growing areas in the Irrawaddy
Delta were delighted with the opportunity to tell
the government what they think of them, a Western
aid worker told IPS on condition of anonymity.
"It's the first opportunity since the 1990
election that they have had to express
themselves," she said. "And they see it as a
referendum on the military government; so expect a
resounding 'No' from them."
After the
cyclone destroyed hundreds of villages in the
Irrawaddy area, these farmers may no longer have
an opportunity to voice their resentment. The vote
has been postponed there - and may never happen.
"Not only are there tens of thousands dead, the
wind and water destroyed local and provincial
offices, including the lists of registered
voters," said an Asian diplomat. "They will not be
able to recover those in the two weeks they have
delayed the polls there."
Several
opposition Myanmar media organizations have been
working clandestinely inside the country trying to
collect an unofficial survey of electoral opinion
on the referendum.
Burma News
International (BNI) - an umbrella group of more
than 10 publications and agencies - which
interviewed more than 2,000 voters across the
county, before the cyclone struck, produced
startling results.
BNI secretary Mu Hlaing
Theint told IPS that a two-page questionnaire, to
ensure statistical consistency, was used to
compile the results from telephone and
face-to-face interviews.
Almost seven out
of 10 interviewed said they had no idea what was
in the constitution. One in four voters had still
to make up their minds which way they would vote.
So, despite the regime's intensive propaganda
campaign there remains a significant number of
undecided voters.
Of those who said they
would vote, more than two-thirds said they would
vote "No". Around one in 10 said they intended to
vote "Yes". Soldiers were most likely to vote
"yes" - at a ratio of two to one - while
government employees were almost evenly divided
between "Yes" and "No" votes.
Students,
teachers, farmers, journalists and housewives
overwhelmingly said they intended to reject the
constitution. Housewives, shopkeepers, business
people and traders were most undecided about which
way to vote - one in three had yet to make up
their minds.
The "No" vote was also
strongest in the areas that had large populations
of ethnic minorities - Chin, Kachin, Karen,
Karenni, Mon and Shan states - where well over 80%
were going to vote against the constitution.
While these are not scientific results,
they do reflect what observers are predicting will
happen in these areas. The regime, well aware of
the regional variations, has decided not to
announce the results at each polling station or
even provincial level. The only announcement will
come from the equivalent of the electoral
commission in the capital Naypidaw.
"This
is very different from the 1990 elections, when
the election results were made public at each
local polling station," Zin Linn, a former
political prisoner and now spokesman for the
Myanmar government in exile. "It means they will
be able to manipulate the results to their own
ends."
There is no doubt though that the
real vote is not going to be announced - it has
been rigged from the start. The junta has carried
out a concerted campaign of harassing and
intimidating voters. "The police called on our
family last week and told us we had to vote 'Yes'
or we'd go to jail for three years," a middle-aged
mother in Yangon said over phone, on condition of
anonymity.
"The whole process is surreal -
to have a referendum where only those who are in
favor of the constitution can campaign," former
United Nations rapporteur for human rights in
Myanmar, Professor Paulo Pinheiro, told IPS.
"A referendum without some basic freedoms
- of assembly, political parties and free speech -
is a farce. What the Myanmar [Burmese] government
calls a process of democratization is in fact a
process of consolidation of an authoritarian
regime," Pinheiro added.
Waiting for
aid International aid agencies and the
United Nations are still on standby, waiting for
the junta to give the green signal to mount relief
and rehabilitation efforts. Experienced rapid
deployment teams have been on alert and waiting
for several days now.
"Our biggest concern
is that the aftermath of the cyclone could be more
deadly than the storm itself," Richard Horsey,
spokesman for the regional UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Bangkok,
told IPS. "The key focus now is getting clean
water and medical supplies to the affected areas
as quickly as possible to prevent a second wave of
deadly epidemics from water-borne diseases."
Planeloads of relief supplies and
equipment were reported arriving in Yangon since
Tuesday. Much of that is bilateral assistance from
India, Thailand and Japan, though some UN aid
agencies also managed to land supplies like
plastic sheeting for make-shift accommodation,
tents, mosquito nets, medical supplies and water
purification tablets.
The International
Committee for Red Cross has sent medical supplies
while the UN's main food aid organization, the
WFP, has also managed to fly in extra supplies of
rice and high-energy biscuits. "We hope to fly in
more assistance in the next few days," WFP's
Risley, told IPS. "But the challenge will be to
get this assistance to the affected areas in the
Irrawaddy Delta because of road blockages."
The UN has begun to distribute food to the
homeless in Yangon. "WFP food assistance has now
begun to reach persons who are without shelter or
food resources in and around Yangon," said Chris
Kaye, WFP country director. Aid agencies are
trying to reach the delta, and the government has
provided a few helicopters and boats to help the
delivery of relief materials.
The
government belatedly realized that action is
needed to prevent hoarding and price speculation.
"We are coordinating and cooperating with
businessmen. We appeal to entrepreneurs and
businessmen not to cash in the disaster,"
Myanmar's Information Minister Major General Kyaw
Hsan told a press conference.
But for most
people in Myanmar, this appeal simply added insult
to injury, as they blame the government for the
skyrocketing prices of staples - this was what
gave rise to the massive street protests led by
monks last year that were brutally suppressed.
"In Rangoon [Yangon] people feel they have
lost everything and have nothing more to lose,"
said a young activist student. A repeat of
September's anti-price rise protests is
increasingly likely, especially if the government
continues to disregard the main concerns of the
people crippled by the cyclone.
"The
military has shown its true colors that it has no
concern for the plight of the people," said Win
Min, an independent Myanmar academic based in
Chiang Mai, Thailand. "This could easily be the
final nail in the military's coffin; it is now no
longer 'if' but 'when'," he added.
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