YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar’s ruling generals announced Thursday that a new constitution viewed by critics as a pro-junta sham had been overwhelmingly approved by voters.
The commission in charge of the May 10 referendum said 92.4 percent of voters approved the constitution, state-run media reported. The pro-democracy opposition says the new constitution will enshrine military rule.
Voting was postponed in the country’s largest city, Yangon, and the rest of southern Myanmar after Tropical Cyclone Nargis hit just days before the balloting.
Most residents of the storm-ravaged areas, where disease and shortages of food, clean water and medical treatment threaten the lives of injured and weak survivors, are scheduled to cast their ballots May 24.
But the military regime, which has ruled Myanmar since 1962, didn’t wait for complete results before declaring the constitution had been ratified. The announcement was made the same day that the government raised the official death toll from the cyclone to 43,318, still far below estimates by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
News on the referendum results appeared to be greeted with quiet resignation in rain-soaked Yangon.
Many of the city’s 7 million people still don’t have electricity and running water 13 days after the storm struck. The price of rice has shot up 50 percent, the cost of fuel has more than doubled and other basic needs are sapping meager savings.
Heavy rain fell Thursday, and foreign aid agencies, frustrated at the junta’s refusal to open the country to a massive international relief effort, warn that the early monsoons increase the risk of an additional catastrophe.
The U.N. and European Union have sent officials to Yangon to try to persuade the military regime to allow teams of foreign experts and equipment into Myanmar, also known as Burma, to assess needs and supervise the distribution of supplies.
But so far, the emissaries have met only lower-ranking government ministers and officials in Yangon, not the top generals ensconced 200 miles to the north in the remote new capital, Naypyidaw.
Human-rights activists insist that the referendum was rigged by a regime that has made criticism of the junta a criminal offense.
