The head of Myanmar’s military junta yesterday vowed to hold a long-planned election in December, urging the regime’s opponents to put down their weapons and re-enter the legal fold.
During a speech at the annual Armed Forces Day parade in Naypyidaw, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing said that the military State Administration Council (SAC) was “making provisions to hold the general election this coming December” and that preparations were “actively underway.”
“Provisions are being made to ensure that all eligible voters can exercise their right to vote, to hold a free and fair multiparty democratic general election that reflects the wholehearted aspirations of the people, and to become a dignified election [sic],” Min Aung Hlaing said, according to an English transcript of his speech published by the Global New Light of Myanmar. He also promised that the SAC would transfer power “to the government formed as a result of the election.”
Min Aung Hlaing also used his speech to air a series of familiar grievances and self-justifications. The general repeated the unfounded allegation that the November 2020 election was marked by “blatant electoral fraud” by the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), which necessitated the military’s takeover. He then called on all ethnic armed organizations, “armed terrorist factions,” and People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) “to renounce violence and pursue political solutions through dialogue – whether by engaging in party politics or participating in electoral processes.”
Since seizing power on February 1, 2021, the SAC has pledged to hold an election and transfer power back to a civilian government. But its plans have been bedevilled by the upsurge in armed resistance to its rule in many parts of the country, and it has been forced repeatedly to extend the six-month state of emergency due to the deteriorating security situation. Earlier this week, Myanmar state media reported that “a plan has been set to hold the election in the third or fourth week of December this year or in the first or second week of January next year.”
Critics of the junta’s election plan – and there are many – have dismissed it as an electoral charade designed to enshrine the military’s power behind a civilian veneer. In 2023, the junta dissolved 40 political parties, including the popular NLD, which won both the 2015 and 2020 elections in a landslide.
In any event, while the junta claims that 53 parties have signed up to contest the election, the current conditions in Myanmar are likely to make the administration of any election – even a sham political process – very challenging.
The U.N. estimates that Myanmar’s conflict has now displaced more than 3 million people. Large swathes of the country’s periphery, and even significant areas within the country’s dry central plain, are now either under the control of ethnic armed groups of civilian PDFs, or too hotly contested to permit the holding of an election. Meanwhile, the economy has atrophied, and the U.N. estimates that around a third of the population is in need of humanitarian assistance.
Reflecting these difficulties, a pre-election census conducted late last year could only be completed in 145 of the country’s 330 townships – and this was according to the junta’s own accounting. During his speech yesterday, Min Aung Hlaing appeared to make a concession to reality when he said that the election will be conducted “based on respective regional security conditions.” The Irrawaddy has speculated that the election might be held in stages across December and January, like the country’s first post-independence election, which was held in three stages between 1950 and 1952 due to the civil war of the time.
Even if the military can administer an election and convince a few armed opposition factions to participate, it will do little to resolve the political grievances that have driven the rebellion against the coup regime. This centers on the central political role claimed by the military, which is entwined with Myanmar’s social and economic life. Earlier this week, however, the junta’s Border Security Minister Lt. Gen. Yar Pyae said that the military had no intention of withdrawing from politics, and that its opponents’ demands to this effect were “unrealistic.”
This makes it likely that the current conflicts will continue beyond the election, regardless of the political coloration of the government that reigns in Naypyidaw.