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The Myanmar military’s promise to hold elections in December 2025 or January 2026 has been condemned as a “sham” that risks bringing even greater violence.
Myanmar’s military junta announced on Saturday, in comments reported in state media, that it would hold a long-promised election, specifying a timeframe for the first time since seizing power in a 2021 coup.
The coup was widely opposed by the public and prompted an armed resistance, plunging much of the country into conflict.
China, an ally of the military that has sought to protect its economic investments in the country, has previously expressed support for the election plans. However, most western countries and election watchdogs are highly unlikely to view the vote as credible.
Opposition parties are mostly either banned from contesting or boycott elections, while almost 22,000 political prisoners remain in detention, according to a local monitoring group, including Aung San Suu Kyi, whose government was ousted in 2021. Her party, National League for Democracy (NLD), was dissolved for failing to re-register under an electoral law introduced after the coup.
It is also unclear how the military would implement elections given that it has lost control of large swathes of the country to a patchwork of opposition groups that are fighting against its rule. Its territorial losses have been so severe that it was only able to conduct a full census, designed to prepare voter lists, in less than half (145) of the country’s 330 townships.
A study commissioned by the BBC, suggests the military controls only 21% of the country’s territory, though it still holds the key, densely populated cities.
“There’s no question an election held under current conditions will be a sham and it’s important that countries denounce the plan to hold elections by the Myanmar military and deny technical support,” said Bryony Lau, the deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
“It’s clear that holding an election currently is only about the military’s interest. For ordinary people in Myanmar it must be a terrifying prospect.”
When the military’s census was conducted last year, people were afraid to answer questions, while those being made to conduct the census also feared being targeted by the opposition.
Analysts have warned the military, which has launched bloody crackdowns on dissent since seizing power, is likely to deploy further violence to ensure polling goes ahead in areas it controls. Opposition groups may also seek to resist violently.
Chin Human Rights Organization, a human rights NGO, said on social media that western democratic countries “must send a clear, unequivocal message by pre-emptively denouncing the junta’s polls”.
Debbie Stothard, the founder of Altsean-Burma, a network of human rights organisations in south-east Asia, said the junta was trying to gain legitimacy by “holding an election where parties that won over 95% of the seats in 2020 [the last election prior to the coup] have been excluded”.
There is concern that the election will bring even greater bloodshed, she said. “We can see already preparation for the election has involved a sharp spike in violence – 2024 saw more airstrikes than 2021, 2022 and 2023 combined. We’ve seen areas that are not reachable by the junta being bombarded with airstrikes – they are literally trying to kill off the opposition,” she said.
A joint statement by election experts, published by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in February, said they “unequivocally reject” plans by Myanmar’s junta to hold an election.
A vote would not bring peace or stability to Myanmar, the statement added, but would “deepen divisions, fuel violence, entrench authoritarian rule and exacerbate the crisis caused by the military coup”.
Foreign ministers from the regional bloc of south-east Asian nations also told the junta in January that it should prioritise a ceasefire over fresh elections.
The junta’s leader, Min Aung Hlaing, has long promised to hold an election but has repeatedly extended a state of emergency. The junta-controlled Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper quoted the leader as saying during a visit to Belarus: “We are planning to hold the election in December 2025 or … by January 2026.” He added that 53 political parties had registered to participate.
The military would also invite teams from Belarus to observe the election, he said during a meeting with the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power for more than three decades, and recently won a seventh five-year term in a vote that was widely rejected as a sham.
