Elections in Myanmar: A farce by force?

Myanmar’s military regime plans elections in three phases from December 28, nearly five years after it staged a coup on February 1, 2021, annulling the November 2020 Parliament and forcibly removing Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). The polls, largely ignored internationally, are aimed at legitimising the junta’s rule, which was already extended through repeated emergency provisions, going far beyond the military-written 2008 Constitution.

The regime hopes to weaken popular resistance and regain global acceptance, hiding itself behind a staged civilian, democratic façade.

The elections will take place against the backdrop of the conflict’s evolution from a non-violent civil disobedience movement against centralised military rule to widespread armed resistance across the Bamar heartland and surrounding ethnic hill areas. The human costs — casualties, torture, deaths in custody, political prisoners, displacement and refugees — have been huge.

The resistance against the military regime peaked between October 2023 and December 2024, when the Three Brotherhood Alliance (3BHA) seized two major Regional Military Commands — in Lashio in the northeast and Ann in Rakhine State — through a coordinated offensive. The alliance also captured most border trade posts and around 94 of Myanmar’s 330 townships, with at least 160 more actively contested. It took control of much of Arakan and Chin states and exerted pressure on strategic northern towns, including, briefly, Mandalay, but could not push its offensive further.

By mid-2025, as the junta planned elections, the opposition offensive was blunted by China’s pressure on ethnic resistance organisations (EROs) under its influence in northeastern Myanmar. Heavy use of air power and artillery against civilian areas, the opposition’s failure to consolidate gains or build a united, coordinated leadership and a broad political-diplomatic front, and some disorder in its command structure also aided the military’s defence. A major earthquake brought humanitarian relief and breathing space for the junta. Regional worries about possible balkanization, transnational crime, and stability — along with ASEAN’s paralysis and distraction caused by the Thailand–Cambodia conflict — further discouraged serious proactive diplomacy on Myanmar.

China’s decision to back the junta openly, the US’s indifference under President Donald Trump, and Russia’s offensive against a wobbling Western alliance in Ukraine created the geopolitical space for the military government to pursue its ruthless campaign against the opposition and proceed with elections.

By October 2025, China forced two opposition armies — the Kokang MNDAA and the Palaung TNLA — to sign ceasefires with the junta, and the army had wrested back key towns in northeastern Myanmar, such as Lashio, Nawnghkio, and Mogok, easing pressure on Mandalay. But these gains could be overstated, reversible, and pyrrhic. To the west, the junta has not made much headway against the Chin forces, the Arakan Army, and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).

Elections will not take place in 56 opposition-held townships and will be only partially held in 93 out of 330, on grounds of lack of security. Draconian provisions for registration of political parties and the conduct of elections have outlawed and constrained the NLD and other major opposition political parties, who have boycotted the elections anyway on grounds of foul play. Voting is likely to be thin.

So, by almost all independent accounts, the elections will be a farce implemented by force. The only claim to legitimacy of the elections will be that they will be held regardless of the number of people voting. This will pave the way for the “King’s Party”, the USDP, to win elections. Its outcome will also be favourable to China.

The junta hopes that the elections will help it win enough international legitimacy with the help of Russia, China, and possibly India, as well as a section of ASEAN, to form a government with an acceptable face, escape international isolation, attract sufficient investment and commerce to procure more arms and stabilise the economy, and regain its seat in the UN. It can draw some encouragement from the recent decision of Donald Trump’s administration to deport refugees to Myanmar from the US on the

grounds that the situation in the Southeast Asiancountry is normal enough for elections to be held..

For China, Myanmar’s dependence on it provides an opportunity to influence internal politics in favour of its strategic and economic interests that include access to the Bay of Bengal, Belt and Road Initiative projects, energy pipelines, connectivity, trade and transit routes through Myanmar, and commercial investments in natural resources and real estate.

But the junta is unlikely to be able to establish its writ nationwide, especially in Rakhine and the dry zone of central Myanmar in Sagaing and Magway, the heart of the Bamar insurgency that is the nationalist bulwark against Chinese domination and hegemony.

The National Unity Government, formed by leaders opposed to the junta, has not built a unified command or system of governance, even in “liberated” areas under ethnic organisations, and its diplomatic gains are modest. Equally telling is the failure to build on the 3BHA’s 2023–24 gains, provide national coordination, and turn scattered mutinies into a single offensive for a democratic and federal Myanmar.

Nor has enough been done to develop a political framework for autonomy, federalism, and democracy beyond the 2023 Charter. Unless the opposition raises its military, political, and diplomatic game — or the military or international community propose something more imaginative — Myanmar will remain contested after the elections.

India — a pluralist democracy with federal traits — could have played a constructive counterweight to China. In late 2024, it briefly tried by hosting both military and opposition representatives. But India and others erred by underestimating how irreconcilable democracy and federalism are with centralised military rule in today’s Myanmar, and by leaving the issue of Myanmar to ASEAN. A better course for the international community, ASEAN, and India is to steer Myanmar toward a federal, democratic union.

The elections will not change Myanmar’s trajectory but may entrench China’s dominance and narrow India’s room for manoeuvre. India should lean on its democratic and pluralist strengths in managing its relations with Myanmar, instead of imitating China.

(The writer is a retired diplomat who served as India’s ambassador to Myanmar between June 2013 and May 2016)