Sunday, December 28, 2025 - A trickle of voters made their way to Myanmar’s heavily restricted polls on Sunday, with the ruling junta touting the exercise as a return to democracy five years after it ousted the last elected government, triggering civil war.
Former civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi remains jailed,
while her hugely popular party has been dissolved and is not taking part.
Campaigners, Western diplomats and the UN’s rights chief
have all condemned the phased month-long vote, citing a ballot stacked with
military allies and a stark crackdown on dissent.
The pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party is
widely expected to emerge as the largest one, in what critics say would be a
rebranding of martial rule.
The Southeast Asian nation of around 50 million is riven by
civil war, and there will be no voting in rebel-held areas.
In junta-controlled territory, the first of three rounds
started at 6:00 am (2330 GMT Saturday), including constituencies in the cities
of Yangon, Mandalay and the capital Naypyidaw, where military chief Min Aung
Hlaing cast his ballot.
“We guarantee it to be a free and fair election,” he told
reporters.
“It’s organized by the military; we can’t let our name be
tarnished.”
Snaking queues of voters formed outside polling stations in
the last election in 2020, which the military declared void a few months later
when it ousted Aung San Suu Kyi and seized power.
But this time, journalists and polling staff outnumbered
early voters at a downtown Yangon station near the gleaming Sule Pagoda — the
site of huge pro-democracy protests after the coup.
Among a trickle of early voters, 45-year-old Swe Maw
dismissed international criticism.
“It’s not an important matter,” he said. “There are always
people who like and dislike.”
At another polling station near Aung San Suu Kyi’s vacant
home, Bo Saw, the first voter, said the election was “very important and will
bring the best for the country”.
“The first priority should be restoring a safe and peaceful
situation,” the 63-year-old told AFP.
But in total, only around 100 people voted at the two
stations during their first hour of operation, according to an AFP tally
The run-up saw none of the feverish public rallies that Aung
San Suu Kyi once commanded, and the junta has waged a withering pre-vote
offensive to claw back territory.
The military ruled Myanmar for most of its post-independence
history, before a 10-year interlude saw a civilian government take the reins in
a burst of optimism and reform.
But after Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy
party trounced pro-military opponents in the 2020 elections, Min Aung Hlaing
snatched power in a coup, alleging widespread voter fraud.
Aung San Suu Kyi is serving a 27-year sentence for charges
rights groups dismiss as politically motivated.
“I don’t think she would consider these elections to be
meaningful in any way,” her son Kim Aris said from his home in Britain.
Most parties from the 2020 vote, including Aung San Suu
Kyi’s, have since been dissolved.
The Asian Network for Free Elections says 90 per cent of the
seats in the last elections went to organisations that do not appear on
Sunday’s ballots.
New electronic voting machines will not allow write-in
candidates or spoiled ballots.
The junta is pursuing prosecutions against more than 200
people for violating draconian legislation forbidding “disruption” of the poll,
including protest or criticism.
“These elections are clearly taking place in an environment
of violence and repression,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said last week.
The second round of polling will take place in two weeks
before the third and final round on January 25, but the junta has conceded that
elections cannot happen in almost one in five lower house constituencies.
When the military seized power, it put down pro-democracy
protests, and many activists quit the cities to fight as guerrillas alongside
ethnic minority armies that have long held sway in Myanmar’s fringes.
Zaw Tun, an officer in the pro-democracy People’s Defence
Force in the northern region of Sagaing, pledged: “We will continue to fight.
0 Comments