The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Yangon

Residents of Myanmar's largest city were plunged into a primitive existence Monday, using candles instead of electricity, lining up to buy shrinking supplies of water and hacking their way through streets blocked by trees felled in a cyclone that killed more than 350.

Older citizens said they had never seen Yangon, a city of some 6.5 million, so devastated in their lifetimes.

With the city's already unstable electricity supply virtually nonfunctional citizens lined up to buy candles, which doubled in price, as well as water since lack of electricity-driven pumps left most households dry. Some walked to the city's lakes to wash. Hotels and richer families were using private generators but only sparingly, given the soaring price of fuel.

Despite the havoc wreaked by tropical cyclone Nargis across wide swaths of the Southeast Asian country, the government indicated that a referendum on the country's draft constitution would proceed as planned on May 10. "It's only a few days left before the coming referendum and people are eager to cast their vote," the state-owned newspaper Myanma Ahlin said Monday. Pro-democracy groups in the country and many international critics have branded the constitution as merely a tool for the military's continued grip on power. Should the junta be seen as failing disaster victims, voters who already blame the regime for ruining the economy and squashing democracy could take out their frustrations at the ballot box. The Foreign Ministry called resident ambassadors to a meeting Monday, and some diplomats said they expected the government to request foreign emergency assistance.

Some in Yangon complained the 400,000-strong military was doing little to help victims after Saturday's storm, only clearing streets where the ruling elite resided but leaving residents to cope on their own in most other areas.