Irrawaddy/AFP-Jan 25
Myanmar opened the final round of its month-long election on Sunday, with the dominant pro-military party on course for a landslide in a junta-run vote critics say will prolong the army’s grip on power. Myanmar has a long history of military rule, but the generals took a back seat for a decade of civilian-led reforms. That ended in a 2021 military coup when democratic figurehead Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was detained, civil war broke out, and the country descended into a humanitarian crisis. The election’s third and final phase opened in dozens of constituencies across the country at 6 am on Sunday, just a week shy of the coup’s five-year anniversary. Voting is not being held in rebel-held areas of the country.
While the military pledges the election will return power to the people, rights monitors say the run-up has been characterized by coercion and the crushing of dissent. AFP journalists saw balloting begin in the second city of Mandalay, where 53-year-old teacher Zaw Ko Ko Myint cast his vote at a high school around dawn. “Although I do not expect much, we want to see a better country,” he told AFP. “I feel relieved after voting, as if I fulfilled my duty.” AFP journalists also saw polling open in Yangon’s Hlaing Tharyar township — the site of a bloody crackdown on anti-coup protests five years ago. With Daw Aung San Suu Kyi sidelined and her hugely popular party dissolved, democracy advocates say the ballot is stacked with military allies. The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP)—packed with retired officers and described by analysts as a military puppet—won more than 85 percent of elected lower house seats and two-thirds of those in the upper house in the poll’s first two phases. A military-drafted constitution also reserves a quarter of both houses for the armed forces. The combined parliament will pick the president, and junta chief Min Aung Hlaing has not ruled out taking the role. Read more at:
