Myanmar junta outlines phased election plan amid escalating conflict
Myanmar’s military junta has released new details about its long-promised general election, announcing that the first phase of voting will take place on December 28 across roughly one-third of the country’s townships.
According to an announcement published in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar on Thursday, ballots will initially be cast in 102 of Myanmar’s 330 townships. These include the entirety of the administrative capital Naypyidaw and about one-quarter of Yangon, the nation’s largest city and commercial hub of more than seven million people.
However, the plans highlight the junta’s limited control. In Rakhine State, where the powerful Arakan Army has gained near-total dominance, only three out of 17 townships will participate in the first round of voting. In the Sagaing region, a hotbed of pro-democracy guerrilla activity, ballots will be cast in just one-third of townships. Other conflict zones were notably absent from the election rollout.
The military has not yet provided dates for subsequent rounds of voting, nor has it clarified whether elections will eventually be held in territories where fighting remains intense. Observers warn that the staggered process could allow the regime to selectively stage elections only in areas under its firm grip, while sidelining regions controlled by ethnic armed groups or resistance forces.
Myanmar’s last nationwide election, held in November 2020, resulted in a landslide victory for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). The military later annulled the results, citing unproven claims of widespread fraud, and seized power in a coup in February 2021. Suu Kyi remains in detention, serving multiple prison sentences on charges her supporters and international observers say are politically motivated.
A UN special rapporteur on Myanmar has already condemned the planned December polls as a “sham” designed to entrench military rule rather than restore democracy. Critics also note that millions of displaced citizens, including Rohingya Muslims stripped of voting rights in 2015 and 2020, are unlikely to have a say in the upcoming process.
Despite the junta’s insistence that the elections are a step toward “stability and peace,” analysts argue that the vote risks deepening divisions and could further inflame violence in areas where anti-junta forces have pledged to prevent polling from taking place.
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