Myanmar’s junta chief has confirmed that the military plans to hold elections at the end of this year, state media reported yesterday, while issuing a call to insurgent groups to put down their weapons and engage in political dialogue.
In a speech to the Peace Forum 2025 in Naypyidaw, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing said that the election is on track to be held in December and January, as planned, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported.
“We are committed to implementing the multiparty democratic system that the people aspire to,” said Min Aung Hlaing, who also serves as chairman of the junta’s “National Solidarity and Peacemaking Central Committee.”
Ming Aung Hlaing acknowledged that “the ability to hold elections largely depends on the country’s internal stability, peace, and security progress,” but said that the military State Administration Council (SAC) was “currently making the necessary preparations to hold the elections as widely and extensively as possible.” He added, “Most importantly, the elections must be free and fair.”
Shortly after delivering the speech, Min Aung Hlaing jetted off to Belarus, where he will attend the Europe-Asia Economic Forum in Minsk, his second trip to the repressive nation this year.
The SAC has long planned to hold elections as a prelude to the handover of power to a quasi-civilian government, in the hope that this will help catalyze an end to the current conflict and allow the government to regain international legitimacy.
Unsurprisingly, the plan has been denounced both by resistance groups and independent observers as an illegitimate electoral charade designed to enshrine military rule behind a civilian façade. In 2023, the SAC dissolved 40 political parties, including the National League for Democracy (NLD), which won both the 2015 and 2020 elections in a landslide.
Min Aung Hlaing’s announcement was couched in a self-exculpatory speech that sought to portray the military’s actions as motivated by the interests of peace and democracy. He justified the February 2021 coup against the National League for Democracy (NLD) government on the grounds that the party had “veered off the democratic path.” The military has long claimed that the NLD’s landslide election victory was accompanied by massive electoral fraud, although it has never provided any convincing evidence to support its claim.
In any event, as I have noted previously, the SAC’s election plans are likely to be complicated, if not entirely defeated, by the unstable political situation in much of the country. Since announcing its plans to hold an election shortly after the coup, the SAC has seen an upsurge in armed resistance to its rule in most regions, which has forced it repeatedly to delay its election plans.
While the junta has recently been able to slow the advance of its opponents – with no small help from China, which has pressured ethnic armed groups in Kachin and northern Shan states to cease their offensives and even to hand back hard-won territory to the SAC – it remains true that large parts of the country, including most of Rakhine State, and large parts of Karen (Kayin), Kachin, Shan, and Chin states, remain outside the central state’s control.
The most likely outcome is that the junta will manage to hold some limited form of election in the areas that remain under its control – and that these will be recognized by a number of foreign nations, including some within ASEAN. However, this is unlikely to be accepted by numerous resistance groups that are fighting for the permanent removal of the military from Myanmar’s political life, and failing that, the deconstruction of the union into its constituent parts.