‘Not a real election’: Myanmar holds first polls since 2021 coup but many aren’t voting
Sign up now: Get insights on Asia's fast-moving developments
Voters at a polling station beside the landmark Sule Pagoda in Yangon on Dec 28.
ST PHOTO: MAY WONG
Follow topic:
- Myanmar held its first general election since the 2021 coup, but some citizens are refusing to vote, viewing it as unfair and unlikely to bring change.
- Despite security concerns and ongoing clashes, some voters expressed hope for change, while analysts say the election aims to legitimise the military regime.
- Critics anticipate increased political chaos and atrocities, even with an "elected" parliament, as the military seeks global support.
AI generated
YANGON – Gallery owner Su Htwe was in hospital after giving birth to a baby boy during the last Myanmar general election back in 2020.
Despite pain from her caesarean operation and her newborn being in intensive care, she made her way to a polling station to cast her ballot.
Five years on, as the country on Dec 28 kicked off its first general election since a 2021 military coup
Said the 33-year-old mother of three: “We don’t believe this election can change the country... We don’t recognise that this is a fair election at all. This is not a real election.”
While polling proceeded relatively smoothly on Dec 28, reports of explosions in cities such as Mandalay and Bago, as well as the town of Myawaddy near the Thai-Myanmar border, underlined security concerns amid ongoing clashes between the military and resistance forces.
While the junta government has called the election to seek legitimacy and recognition, voting will be held in only 265 of the 330 townships across the country, home to some 50 million people.
Significant parts of the country have come under ethnic armed groups like the Kachin Independence Army, which controls large parts of the north, and the Arakan Army in the western Rakhine state. Civilian resistance forces have also wrested territories from the military.
For the first time, the country’s general election will be held in three phases. The first phase on Dec 28 covered 102 townships. Residents in 100 other townships will vote on Jan 11, while those in the remaining townships will go to the polls on Jan 25. Results are expected to be announced only after the final phase.
On Dec 28, voters who turned up at a polling station beside the landmark Sule Pagoda in Yangon told The Straits Times they were voting because they felt that they had to do so.
A 19-year-old, who wanted to be known only as Stephanie, said she planned to study overseas and did not want any trouble if the authorities found out she had not voted.
Mr Tin Myint Khine, a 63-year-old retired teacher, said he voted as he hopes for change from the current situation. “I do have expectations, but whether it will actually happen remains to be seen.”
At the polling station, voters slowly streamed in to cast their ballot, in contrast with the 2020 election when more people were seen waiting in line. Soldiers holding guns were seen outside the station.
The military had said the general election is being conducted in the interest of the people and is meant to offer a new chapter of hope for building peace and reconstructing the economy.
But critics have baulked at that suggestion, decrying the military’s actions.
Myanmar political analyst Naing Min Khant said it was unrealistic to expect positive or democratic outcomes from the election.
He added that the polls were “designed as a form of institutional engineering aimed at securing international legitimacy and managing elite interests to prolong the grip on power of Senior General Min Aung Hlaing”.
Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing showing his inked finger after casting his ballot in the capital, Naypyitaw, on Dec 28.
PHOTO: AFP
Myanmar’s military commander-in-chief had deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her elected civilian government
The allegations against the 80-year-old are widely regarded as politically motivated.
Likewise, Dr Hunter Marston, an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who researches South-east Asia, was not too optimistic about the election, noting that “as long as the military remains in control, the country will continue to experience violent conflict and political upheaval”.
He said “the resistance is not going away overnight, and without a credible opposition or meaningful rights and political representation, the people of Myanmar will not settle for the current military-brokered political arrangement”.
Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), which won a landslide victory in the 2020 election, was dissolved in 2023 when it refused to re-register as a political party under the military-stipulated rules.
With the popular NLD out of the way, the military-affiliated Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) is largely unchallenged. It has the largest number of candidates at almost 5,000 and is contesting in all the townships.
The USDP is one of just six parties competing nationwide, with the others competing only at the state or regional levels. A total of 57 political parties will participate in the election.
The People’s Party, led by 65-year-old former democracy activist Ko Ko Gyi, is one of the six parties competing nationwide. He said the party is taking part to offer a different political voice to the people.
“If we reject the election, what is the better alternative? That’s why, in my sense, the election is not the best choice but the least damaging,” he added.
Election officials counting early voting ballots in Yangon on Dec 28.
ST PHOTO: MAY WONG
Countries like China and Russia, which have sent election observers to Myanmar, support the election, seeing it as a way for the Myanmar military to achieve a more stable political landscape.
Ms Debbie Stothard, founder of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, which promotes democracy and human rights in Myanmar, said the junta hopes to convince some global actors to return to “business as usual” although it has lost territorial control of half the country.
She told ST: “The global community should brace itself for more political and economic chaos as the military continues to commit atrocities after the sham polls, this time with the support of an ‘elected’ military-controlled Parliament.”
According to ACLED, an independent global conflict monitor, the Myanmar military conducted 2,602 air and drone strikes in 2025 up to Nov 28, resulting in almost 2,000 deaths. This was a spike from 2022, when the military launched 363 such attacks, causing 216 deaths.
Since the 2021 coup, at least 6,800 civilians have been killed in Myanmar, with more than 3.5 million people displaced by conflict, said a UN report in June 2025.
Still, despite reservations about the election, some expressed hopes for change.
With a purple ink mark on his pinky finger, signifying that he had voted, 68-year-old trader Nyunt Oo told ST: “I hope a genuine democratic government will come to power.”
