Myanmar’s pro-military party claims landslide in first phase of junta-run election
Myanmar’s dominant pro-military party said it secured an overwhelming win in the first phase of voting in a junta-organized election, a result that, if confirmed, would deepen the military’s hold on power after a 2021 coup.
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A senior official from the Union Solidarity and Development Party told AFP the party won 82 lower house seats in townships where counting was complete, out of 102 at stake in the first round. The tally implies the USDP captured more than 80 percent of the lower house seats contested Sunday. Official results have not yet been posted by the Union Election Commission.
The military opened voting Sunday in what it describes as a phased, month-long process to “return power to the people.” But the balloting has been condemned by campaigners, Western diplomats and the United Nations’ human rights chief, who say the rules and candidate lists are tilted to entrench military rule and silence dissent.
At the last nationwide vote in 2020, the USDP was routed by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. The NLD was dissolved after the coup and did not appear on Sunday’s ballots. Suu Kyi has been in detention since the military seized power, a move that triggered a nationwide civil war.
Analysts say the outcome was preordained. “It makes sense that the USDP would dominate,” said Morgan Michaels, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in comments to AFP. “The election is not credible. They rig it ahead of time by banning different parties, making sure that certain people don’t turn up to vote, or they do turn up to vote under threat of coercion to vote a certain way.”
After casting his ballot, military chief Min Aung Hlaing, who has ruled by decree for five years, insisted the armed forces could be trusted to hand power to a civilian-led government. “We guarantee it to be a free and fair election,” he told reporters in the capital, Naypyidaw. “It’s organised by the military, we can’t let our name be tarnished.”
Sunday’s voting covered 102 of Myanmar’s 330 townships, the largest of the three planned phases. The military has acknowledged elections cannot take place in almost one in five lower house constituencies amid the war, which has pitted pro-democracy militias and long-standing ethnic minority armies against the junta’s forces.
Two more phases of voting are scheduled for January 11-15. The Union Election Commission has not provided a timetable for releasing official results from the first round.
The USDP is widely regarded by analysts as a civilian proxy for the armed forces, which dominated politics for decades and retain vast institutional power, from security services to state-owned conglomerates. The party’s claimed haul on Sunday underlines how sharply the political landscape has been reshaped since the coup, with leading opponents jailed or sidelined and campaigning restricted.
Rights groups say the election cannot reflect the will of Myanmar’s people due to a sweeping crackdown on dissent, severe limits on assembly and speech, and a candidate pool packed with military allies. The junta’s promise of a “free and fair” process has been widely dismissed by democracy advocates, who say the staged vote is designed to manufacture legitimacy rather than confer it.
For now, the USDP’s declaration sets the tone for a tightly controlled electoral process proceeding alongside a grinding conflict. Whether the promised handover to a civilian-led government materializes — and whether it commands public trust — will hinge on conditions far beyond the ballot boxes.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
