The damage and disruptions from the storm — the death toll could rise by many tens of thousands, roadways and communications are blocked — forced the regime to postpone the voting in central Yangon and the much harder-hit Irrawaddy Delta, which lies to the south. Those areas will go to the polls on May 24. Elsewhere in the country, voting will proceed on Saturday.
Most of the international community considers the draft constitution — and the referendum — to be a sham. Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, a Brazilian lawyer and former United Nations human rights envoy who served as a liaison with the junta, ridiculed the draft constitution and the government’s ban on any public criticism of the document.
“Completely surreal,” he said.
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Among its stipulations: Parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2010 and a fourth of all seats are reserved for military officers. Also, Burmese who have married foreigners are ineligible for office, a codicil aimed squarely at Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and pro-democracy activist who remains under house arrest in Yangon. She was married to a British scholar, Michael Aris, who died in 1999.
It is widely expected that the vote will be resoundingly in favor of the draft. The government would probably not permit anything but a landslide. Soldiers, for example, will vote at their barracks, and government workers must vote in front of their bosses.
“Of course we will tick ‘yes,’ ” said a customer service agent at the new airport in Yangon. “We work for the government, what can we do?”
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