The European Union’s special representative for human rights, Kajsa Ollongren, said on Thursday she would not send observers to elections in military-ruled Myanmar because it is unlikely to produce a credible result, according to the Reuters news agency.
It follows Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing’s admission on Wednesday that the military-backed administration will be unable to hold an upcoming general election across the country as a civil war sparked by a 2021 coup rages.
Critics – including many Western countries – have described the elections scheduled for late December as a sham exercise aimed at legitimizing the rule of Myanmar’s junta after it overthrew a democratic civilian government in 2021.
“I would call them regime-sponsored elections. And if they are regime-sponsored, they can only lead to one outcome,” Ollogren told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.
Min Aung Hlaing’s remarks were his first public admission that the polls cannot be fully inclusive.
“We cannot hold elections everywhere 100%,” Min Aung Hlaing said in a speech broadcast on state television from the capital Naypyidaw on Wednesday, adding that by-elections would follow in some areas after a new government is formed.
Myanmar’s last multi-party elections took place on November 8, 2020, with a landslide victory for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). The results were not respected and a military coup took place in February 2021.
The military does not control all of Myanmar. Vast swaths are administered by a range of armed militias, ethnic groups and pro-democracy fighters, some in open armed conflict with the ruling junta.
The junta has invited ASEAN countries to send observers for the elections, which are scheduled to begin on December 28 and continue in stages until January.
With Reuters reporting