Myanmar Military Administration Sets Date For Long-awaited Election
'The first phase of the multi-party democratic general election for each parliament will begin on Sunday 28 December 2025,' Myanmar's Union Election Commission said in a statement quoted by the AFP news agency. The dates for the subsequent phases of the elections, which the military authorities plan to hold across December and January due to the uncertain security situation, 'will be announced later,' it added.
At the end of July, the military-dominated National Defense and Security Council (NDSC) lifted the state of emergency that had been in place since the coup of February 2021, in order to prepare for the election. In doing so, it dissolved the State Administration Council junta and replaced it with a National Defense and Peacekeeping Commission, which will remain in power until the formation of a parliament and government after the planned elections.
During a speech in Magwe Region yesterday, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the country's military chief, 'underscored that the multiparty democratic general election will begin on 28 December and will be conducted in stages, with measures in place to prevent any irregularities in voting,' the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported.
The military has argued (if not in so many words) that the election will create the conditions for the resolution of the country's conflicts. In Magwe yesterday, Min Aung Hlaing told an audience that 'problems arising from political differences must be resolved through political means.' However, with resistance groups and opposition political parties either barred from running or refusing to do so, the election has been dismissed nearly universally as a ploy to preserve the generals' hold on power. As in 2010, any government that emerges from the election is set to be dominated by proxies of the military, and its legitimacy is likely to be hotly contested.
The question that continues to hang over the election plan is whether and to what extent it will be possible to administer an electoral process, even a superficial one, outside of the country's ethnic Bamar core. Since the 2021 coup, resistance groups, including long-established ethnic armed organizations, have seized large parts of territory from the central authorities, particularly in Shan, Kachin, Rakhine, Chin, Kayan (Karenni), and Kayin (Karen) states, as well as parts of Mandalay, Magwe, and Sagaing regions. In addition to this, more than 3.5 million people have now been displaced by conflict, according to the U.N., while the country's economic has atrophied.
While the pace of territorial losses has slowed over the past six months, and even been reversed under Chinese pressure in northern Shan State, the junta remains on the defensive in many parts of the country. On the same day that it lifted the nationwide state of emergency, the NDSC also announced local states of emergency in 63 townships in nine of the country's 14 states and regions, many of them under the control of resistance groups of one sort or another.
As a result, the run-up to the elections is likely to see an intensification of the military's attempts to eliminate the resistance to its rule or 'liberate' territory under the control of anti-regime groups. To take just one example, 'at least 25 civilians, including children,' were killed in a Myanmar regime airstrike on the resistance-controlled town in Kayah State's Hpasawng Township on Sunday, according to a report by The Irrawaddy. A local civil society group described it as the state's 'deadliest airstrike ever.'
In this context, the military's election plans have the feel of an attempt to widen divisions in the already multifarious opposition movement and normalize Myanmar's relationship with the outside world, particularly its regional neighbors.
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