Myanmar announced yesterday that a constitution critics say will cement nearly four decades of military rule was overwhelmingly approved in a referendum held while the country was reeling from Cyclone Nargis.
The document was approved by 92.4 percent of the 22 million eligible voters last Saturday, Aung Toe, head of the Referendum Holding Committee, said on state radio. He gave voter turnout as more than 99 percent.
Voting was postponed in two regions battered by the killer cyclone until May 24, but results from the late balloting could not mathematically reverse the constitution’s approval with only a simple majority needed among a total of 27 million eligible voters.
The junta says a general election will follow in 2010. The document 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.
The constitution would bar Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained leader of the 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.
Aung Toe said another 5 million citizens were eligible to vote May 24 in Yangon and the Irrawaddy delta, the region worst hit May 3 by Nagris, which the UN says may have killed more than 100,000 people.
Human rights organizations and anti-government groups have bitterly accused the government of neglecting cyclone victims to advance its political agenda.
Following the balloting, local journalists said they saw cases of intimidation of voters at polling stations around the country.
The fear of the military, which has ruled since 1962, was so great that few people were expected to vote “no” despite a campaign by pro-democracy activists to oppose the constitution.
The editor of a respected local newsmagazine who had reporters stationed around the country said the information he received showed the vote was not completely free and fair.
“The essence of secrecy is totally lost in some of the polling booths,” said the editor, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
He said irregular practices seen by his reporters included officials telling voters, “Don’t forget to put the tick, the right mark,” as they got ready to cast their ballots.
Some voting officials pulled aside the curtains protecting the privacy of the voting booths, in addition to asking voters to affix their fingerprints on the ballots.
Other journalists saw voters clutching three or four national registration cards, which they exchanged for an equal number of ballots.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS