Yangon  - The two pivotal events for Myanmar in 2008 - Cyclone Nargis and a national referendum - fell on the same month, highlighting the ruling junta's callousness in pursuing its "discipline flourishing democracy" at all costs.

Myanmar's military this year demonstrated to the international community its extreme indifference to public welfare by pushing through a national referendum on a new constitution to cement its future political powers on May 10 - days after the cyclone slammed the Irrawaddy delta and Yangon, leaving almost 140,000 dead and missing and 2.4 million people in desperate need of assistance.

Foreign aid organizations were outraged by the regime's delays in allowing emergency relief and experts as it concentrated its efforts on the national referendum in all but the worst-hit areas.

The results were highly dubious: 92.47 per cent endorsement for a constitution that took 14 years to draft and guarantees the military a dominant role by granting it the right to appoint 110 members of the 440-seat lower house, and 56 members of the 224-seat upper house.

Control of 25 per cent of both houses would bar effectively bar any amendments to the charter that might threaten the military's dominance.

Adding insult to injury, the junta on May 27 extended the detention of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi by another six months to a year, sparking further outcry from the international community that fell on deaf, helmeted ears.

Myanmar junta is bulldozing the country towards a general election in 2010 on its "seven-step road map" to "discipline-flourishing democracy" with a ruthlessness that has already made the outcome unacceptable to most.

Four months after the cyclone hit, while the population was still picking up the pieces of their shattered lives in the Irrawaddy delta, the regime was busy making sure there will be no surprises at the polls nor spontaneous uprisings in 2009, such as the August-September monk-led rebellion of 2007.

The judiciary has proven an effective tool. In November alone, more than 210 political activists were sentenced to long prison terms, some up to 65 years in jail, according to a report released by the exile Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

Most of them were arrested for involvement in September 2007 protests. The association estimates there are more than 2,000 political prisoners in various jails nationwide.

The spate of sentences have decapitated Myanmar's organized opposition, such as the 88 Generation Students group, leaving a vacuum in the anti-government movement for 2009.

This leaves it up to the main opposition party, Suu Kyi's National League of Democracy (NLD), which won the last general election of 1990 by a landslide but was denied power by the junta that declared a new constitution was needed before civilian rule could work.

"It's likely that they will not contest the 2010 election because doing so would deny the legitimacy of the 1990 polls which they already won," said Win Min, a lecturer on Myanmar affairs at Chiang Mai University in Thailand.

The NLD insists on a committee to reviews and amend the constitution before it will join elections, and lend some legitimacy to what will otherwise be an absurd and meaningless exercise.

But some are critical of the NLD's stance. Last month, hundreds of members from the party's youth wing resigned over dissatisfaction with the way "the old men are managing the party."

Without the daily leadership of Suu Kyi, who has been under house detention in near complete isolation from the party since May 2003, the NLD seems increasingly directionless.

"The fate of the NLD is it must rely on Aung San Suu Kyi. She is the only one who can make changes within the party," a former party member said.

That is why many analysts think that freeing Suu Kyi remains the most important matter for NLD's future, and Myanmar's.

"We don't see any new and challenging strong opposition for the junta in near future," a retired professor from Yangon University said. "The only thing we can hope for is there will be international pressure strong enough to release all political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi before the polls." (dpa)