Myanmar junta wraps election with ally set to seal victory
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Myanmar electoral officials setting up electronic voting machines at a polling station in Yangon, Myanmar, one day before the start of the election's third phase.
PHOTO: EPA
MANDALAY, Myanmar - Voting concluded in Myanmar’s month-long general election on Jan 25, with the dominant pro-military party on course to win by a landslide in a junta-run vote that critics say will prolong the army’s grip on power.
The South-east Asian nation has a long history of military rule, but the generals took a back seat for a decade of civilian-led reforms.
That ended in a 2021 military coup when democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi was detained
The election’s third and final phase closed after voting took place in dozens of constituencies across the country, just a week shy of the coup’s five-year anniversary.
The military pledges that the election will return power to the people, but with Ms Suu Kyi sidelined and her hugely popular party dissolved, democracy advocates say the ballot is stacked with military allies.
Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing – who has not ruled out serving as president after the polls – toured voting stations in Mandalay, wearing civilian dress.
“This is the path chosen by the people,” he told reporters in response to a question from AFP. “I am also a part of the people, and I support this.
“The people from Myanmar can support whoever they want to support,” he said.
Voting was not held in rebel-held parts of the country, and in junta-controlled areas, rights monitors said the run-up had been characterised by coercion and the crushing of dissent.
Teacher Zaw Ko Ko Myint, 53, cast his vote at a Mandalay high school around dawn.
“Although I do not expect much, we want to see a better country,” he told AFP. “I feel relieved after voting as if I’ve fulfilled my duty.”
‘Fabricated vote’
The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) – packed with retired officers and described by analysts as a military puppet – won more than 85 per cent of elected Lower House seats
UN rights expert Tom Andrews said in a statement on Jan 23: “States that endorse the results of these polls will be complicit in the junta’s attempt to legitimise military rule through a fabricated vote.”
Official results are expected late this week.
A military-drafted Constitution also gives the armed forces a quarter of the seats in both Houses of Parliament, which will vote as a whole to pick the president.
“I don’t expect anything from this election,” a 34-year-old Yangon resident told AFP earlier, requesting anonymity for security reasons. “Things will just keep dragging on.”
Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party thrashed the USDP in the last election in 2020, before the military seized power on Feb 1, 2021, making unfounded allegations of widespread vote-rigging.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi, 80, remains detained incommunicado at an unknown location on charges that rights monitors dismiss as politically motivated.
‘Not safe at all’
The military has long presented itself as the only force guarding restive Myanmar from rupture and ruin.
But its putsch tipped the country into a full-blown civil war, with pro-democracy guerillas fighting the junta alongside a kaleidoscope of ethnic minority armies that have long held sway in the fringes.
Air strikes are frequent in some regions, others enjoy relative peace, while some zones are blockaded, haunted by the spectre of starvation.
Polling was called off in one in five Lower House constituencies, but some front-line locations went to the polls on Jan 25.
“Candidates still haven’t held any campaigning because of security,” complained one parliamentary candidate, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
“It’s not safe at all to travel.”
There is no official death toll for Myanmar’s civil war.
But monitoring group ACLED, which tallies media reports of violence, estimates that more than 90,000 have been killed on all sides.
Meanwhile, more than 400 people have been pursued for prosecution under stark new legislation forbidding “disruption” of the election and punishing protest or criticism with up to a decade in prison.
Turnout in the first and second phases of the vote was just over 50 per cent, official figures say, compared with roughly 70 per cent in 2020. AFP
