Yesterday, the leader of the Military Junta of Myanmar promised to hold a long -standing election in December, urging the regime’s opponents to deposit their arms and to enter the legal fold.
During a speech during the annual parade of the Armed Forces day in Naycyidaw, General Min Aung Hlaing said that the Military State Board of Directors (SAC) “made arrangements to keep the general elections next December” and that the preparations were “actively underway”.
“Arrangements are made to ensure that all eligible voters can exercise their right to vote, to organize a free and fair multi -party democratic election which reflects the unreserved aspirations of the people and to become a worthy election [sic]”Said Min Aung Hlaing, according to an English transcription of his speech published by the new world of Myanmar. He also promised that the bag would transfer power “to the government formed following the election”.
Min Aung Hlaing also used his speech to broadcast a series of familiar grievances and self-justification. The general repeated the unfounded allegation according to which the November 2020 elections were marked by a “flagrant electoral fraud” by the National League to power for democracy (NLD), which required the takeover of the military. He then called all the ethnic armed organizations, “armed terrorist factions” and the defense forces of people (PDF) “renounce violence and pursue political solutions by dialogue – whether by engaging in parties of the parties or by participating in electoral processes”.
Since taking power on February 1, 2021, the bag has undertaken to retain election power and to transfer to a civil government. But his plans were supported by the resurgence of armed resistance to his reign in many regions of the country, and he has repeatedly forced the state of emergency of six months due to the deterioration of the security situation. Earlier this week, the Myanmar State media reported that “a plan should take the elections during the third or fourth week of December this year or the first or the second week of January of next year.”
The criticisms of the junta electoral plan – and there are many – rejected it as an electoral charade designed to consecrate the power of the army behind a civil veneer. In 2023, the Junta dissolved 40 political parties, including the popular NLD, which won the 2015 and 2020 elections in a landslide.
In any event, while the junta claims that 53 parties have registered to contest the elections, the current conditions in Myanmar are likely to make the administration of any election – even a very difficult political process.
The UN estimates that the Myanmar conflict has now moved more than 3 million people. Large expanses of the country’s periphery, and even important areas in the country’s dry central plain, are now under the control of ethnic groups armed with civilian PDFs, too strongly disputed to allow the holding of an election. Meanwhile, the economy has atrophied and the UN estimates that around a third of the population needs humanitarian assistance.
Reflecting these difficulties, a pre -electoral census carried out at the end of last year could only be completed in 145 of the country’s 330 cantons – and it was according to the junta’s own accounting. Yesterday, during his speech, Min Aung Hlaing seemed to make a concession to reality when he declared that the elections would take place “on the basis of respective regional security conditions”. Irrawaddy hypothesized that the election could take place in stages in December and January, as 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 some armed opposition factions to participate, this will not do much to resolve the political grievances which led the rebellion against the coup d’etat regime. This focuses on the central political role claimed by the army, which is embarked on the social and economic life of Myanmar. Earlier this week, however, however, the Minister of Border Security of the Junta, Lieutenant-General Yar Pyaae, said that the soldiers did not intend to withdraw from politics and that the requests of his opponents for this purpose were “unrealistic”.
This makes it likely that current conflicts will continue beyond the elections, regardless of the political color of the government that reigns in Naycyidaw.