On May 10, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) or Myanmar's ruling military junta, will hold a referendum to adopt a Constitution for the country. However, a cyclone that battered five regions in lower Myanmar, may conceivably have forced the senior regime leaders to put Constitutional matters off until after the clean up, lest the world thinks nut-cases run the place.

For nearly a month, both the SPDC regime and the Opposition have been mobilising their respective supporters, attempting to deliver the other side a devastating blow. Unfortunately, Cyclone Nargis grabbed the headlines with the death toll reported to be in the thousands - a figure that is likely to go up in face of the extreme vulnerability of the rural population and the State's severely inadequate relief and social services, emergency or regular.

Even in the 21sth century, the Burmese, whether Western-educated or not, view nature-induced disasters such as droughts, floods, earthquakes, crop-failures and so on, as the direct outcome of the failures on the part of those who lord over them. Traditionalists in Buddhist Myanmar, which make up the bulk of the population, are no doubt going to reason that as long as the junta continue to rule – and pay lip service to the Buddhist faith, nature is going to exercise its brand of collective punishment and deprive the country of its future.

The rejection of the regime's political plans, or a revolutionary uprising, is not an option available to the public at large in today's Myanmar. But the citizenry, which has already suffered progressive devastation – in economic, political, societal, cultural and intellectual terms – as a direct result of half a century of military rule since 1962, has shown it is at least capable of registering its opposition publicly to the military rule whenever the opportunity to do so emerges.

As questionable as it may sound, Cyclone Nargis is a Godsend for the 'Vote No to the Sham Constitution' campaigners. While the United Nations Security Council and other geopolitical powers may not come to their aid, nature has indeed offered an unexpected political tail wind. For whatever the symbolic and cultural readings of natural disasters and catastrophes, the cyclone-induced material devastation will compound the worst food crisis afflicting Myanmar, a state of affairs that is likely to increase public ire against the regime.

Consequently, the likely outcome of the upcoming referendum will be a resounding 'No', provided the process is free, fair and transparent. Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in particular and the opposition in general, as well as their international supporters, have been drumming up support for the 'No' vote amongst their supporters. In their eyes, the regime's draft Constitution is a surreal piece of work, designed to enshrine the Myanmarese military as sole and ultimate arbiter of politics and power in the country.

They argue – rather correctly – that in this Constitutional process, the military is the creator of the rules (of the game), the participant player and the referee. Therefore, principled opposition against this 'sham' process of constitution adoption is the only sensible position to take.

The Opposition's stance, however, does not necessarily reflect the view of the public, even though the majority of the Burmese people share the Opposition's disdain towards the military. The public seems resigned to the view that booting the generals out of Burmese politics is not realisable or realistic goal, yet.

To those who subscribe to this pragmatic view, the Constitutional arrangements to be adopted through the May 10 referendum are acceptable. Under the circumstances, playing along the military's quasi-democratic game is the only course of real political action, even though it certainly is not the most desirable, or democratic.

According to the draft Constitution, which the junta has clobbered together unilaterally, the military allots itself 25% of the parliamentary seats in any future legislature. The cooler heads amongst the generally anti-military public argue that 75% civilian participation in the legislative process is better than the current political arrangement, wherein the public is excluded from the participatory process completely.

Whatever the likely political outcomes for the junta's Constitutional referendum, three possible scenarios can be portended.  

The first scenario would be something like this: Taking the cue from the imprisoned opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi, specifically her widely reported support for a 'No' vote, the public will reject the military regime's draft Constitution – regardless whether the upcoming Referendum goes ahead as scheduled or is put off until a later date. In tandem, the SPDC regime chooses not to tamper with the vote counting and announces the results promptly and truthfully. Uncharacteristically, the regime thereafter embarks on a genuine process of dialogue and reconciliation with the mainstream political opposition, as well as with the active armed resistance groups, like the Karen National Union, the Shan State Army-South and the Karenni National Progressive Party.

Emboldened by the perestrioka, the exiles and the NLD demand not only the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, but asks to strike out the clause which prohibits her – on grounds of her past marriage to a foreign citizen - from holding the highest office in the land, a position which western governments echo. Myanmar's Asian neighbours such as China, India, Thailand, as well as Japan and ASEAN commend the regime's significant shift while stepping up security and economic cooperation.

The second, and more likely scenario is as follows: the disaster-struck public deal the SPDC regime a psychological blow with a thunderous 'No' at the ballot boxes. Frustrated and angry - and more importantly, not prepared to repeat the mistake of announcing the elections results in 1990 truthfully, the regime's senior leadership decided to rig the referendum results this time around by simply announcing that the Constitution has been voted overwhelmingly by the voters who desired the emergence of a national Constitution as a new basis of politics for 'modern, prosperous and discipline-flourishing democracy'.The Constitution is therefore to be adopted officially in accord with 'the people's desire'. It becomes effective during the first day of the next Parliament, convened following the multiparty elections in 2010. Meanwhile, the military leadership, the SPDC announces, will continue to discharge its honourable duties accorded by the country's historical circumstances in a non-partisan way.

As to be expected, the Opposition screams foul calling for the recount and urging international monitors to come and oversee the recounting process, prompting US, UK, and France to scramble a new UN Security Council Presidential statement calling for the vote. China and Russia call the latest Western position out of synchrony with the UN Charter. Deaf to the Opposition's claims of voting irregularities and fraud, and rejecting the calls from Washington and London to exert pressure on the generals on grounds of 'non-interference' in a sovereign state, Myanmar's neighbours applaud the regime's successful completion of the Constitutional referendum and urges the generals in Nay Pyi Taw to stick to the timetable for the Roadmap for Democracy.

The third and least likely scenario would involve the public voting 'Yes' on the regime's constitution – whether as a result of massive State-directed propaganda, 'reverse bribery', veiled threats, intimidation or coercion by local authorities. Elated, the regime's senior leadership feels vindicated about their faith in the popularity of their 'Roadmap for Democracy' and other nation-building efforts. Confident, the regime launches a number of political initiatives such as disarmament of ethnic ceasefire groups while figuring out what to do with Beijing's local proxies such as the narco-armies of the (Chinese-speaking) Wa and the Kokang  (Myanmar's local Chinese) groups.

Western governments and the opposition maintain its long-standing policies of rejecting the SPDC Constitution and the military-controlled political process. Meanwhile, despite its irrelevance to the regime's political decisions, ASEAN rallies behind Indonesia's efforts to get the regime to appoint Aung San Suu Kyi honorary patron. Failing that, Indonesian mediators simply aim for the dissident's release into permanent exile in England. Jakarta's effort is solidly backed by Thailand's TV-cook-turned-prime-minister, as well as other more serious leaders in the region, who share the junta's view that she needs to be 'kicked upstairs', unfit to operate in the rough and tumble realpolitik of the real world.

Some Myanmar observers have remarked that trying to understand Burmese politics is like tealeaf reading or crystal ball gazing. But uncertainty and unpredictability concerning Myanmar politics and economy is often overstated. Whatever the Referendum results, the fundamental building blocks of politics and power, as well as larger geo-economic and strategic equations surrounding Myanmar are least likely to be affected.

The United Nations will remains helpless as the three Western powers on the Security Council. The UN will continue to talk about its relevance in Myanmar insofar as the processes of reconciliation, poverty alleviation, humanitarian assistance and democratisation are concerned. Having entrenched itself in power – institutionally, administratively, economically and politically – over the past 50 years, the military will continue to dictate the terms of its relations with the public from which, ironically, it claims its institutional legitimacy.

Perhaps the only silver lining in this sordid tale of Myanmar and its still-born democratisation process is that both Western governments and the UN Security Council have accepted, in effect, that the 1990 election results are null and void – nearly a generation after those multiparty elections took place, stripping the noble Opposition of the perceived moral authority to endorse the misguided trade sanctions and tourism boycott.