Hlegu (Myanmar) - Tears welled up in a young woman's eyes as she left a polling station north of Yangon.
She had voted in a constitutional referendum which the military insisted on holding despite the devastation left by Cyclone Nargis.
'I cast a 'Yes' vote, because everyone else did, but I don't know anything about the Constitution,' she said.
Her home in a nearby village was destroyed when the cyclone swept through Myanmar last week, and her family is still struggling to find shelter and a way to rebuild their lives.
'Half of our village was destroyed, but we have to vote anyway,' the 23-year-old said.
The military regime has allowed only a trickle of international aid into the country and devoted its own scarce resources to conducting the referendum asking voters to approve a Constitution which will give the generals broad powers.
The junta did postpone the voting by two weeks in the hardest-hit parts of the country, including the main city of Yangon and remote regions of the Irrawaddy delta.
State TV broadcast a video showing two women singing a pop-style song with the lyrics: 'Let's go vote...with sincere thoughts for happy days.'
'Let's go voting' and 'Come along for voting", five actresses sang to a disco beat on army-controlled MRTV.
The fear of the military, which has ruled since 1962, is so great that few people are expected to reject the charter.
'I voted yes. It was what I was asked to do,' 57-year-old U Kyaing said outside a school which doubled as a polling station in Hlegu.
But in a country where the last election was held 18 years ago, many voters looked uncomfortable and unfamiliar with the process, one elderly woman thought all she had to do was put her unmarked slip in the ballot box.
'For us former soldiers, the military is our father, the military is our mother, so we had already decided to vote yes,' said Aung Oo, a 42-year-old member of the Hlegu's War Veterans Association.
'We were asked to.'
Aye Aye Mar, a 36-year-old housewife, looked frightened when asked if she thought anyone would vote 'no'.
After her eyes darted around to see if anyone was watching, she whispered, 'One vote of 'no' will not make a difference.' Then she raised her voice. 'I'm saying 'yes' to the Constitution.'
Min Lwin, 40, made it clear he did not believe his vote counted. 'What choice do I have?' he said.
One man said he would vote against the Constitution to express his anger at the junta's deadly crackdown on Buddhist monks last September, when security forces fired on and beat up monks leading mass protests in the streets of Yangon.
'I am not going to support the government that killed the monks,' the 48-year-old betel nut seller said.
Even people who escaped the cyclone unscathed said that voting came second to their daily struggle to survive. 'I have to sell this fruit first. I will go and vote in the afternoon,' said a sidewalk vendor.
'I have to get money first so my family can survive. I can only vote once I have enough money to eat,' she said.
About 27 million of the country's 57 million people were eligible to vote and the final count was not expected for two weeks.
Early indications from local counting of ballots showed the vote appeared to average 80 per cent to 90 per cent in favour of the draft charter.
