🇲🇲 The election is done

Now what?

Hello friends!

Photo by Saw Wunna on Unsplash

I find the Myanmar election very enraging. A very impotent pain in the soul. It’s not just that it’s such a horrific injustice, I think, but one that has been heaped onto every generation over and over.

Now, with the final round of three behind us as of Sunday, we’re entering a new stage of post-coup Myanmar. It’s hard to see what materially changes. Reports on aerial bombings and public health disasters continue unabated. What will the difference even be?

I had an odd moment earlier in the week. I appeared on The 9pm Edict, a very fun podcast run by Stil, which I go on every now and then for a look at the region. Midway through chatting about Myanmar, it occurred to me that I haven’t seen a ‘USDP wins the election!’ type piece. I haven’t looked for it, for one, but there is also absolutely no need for it. There have been a lot of fantastic pieces ahead of it, of course, but it is so striking that in the immediate aftermath, there is a total boredom in the outcome. And so there should be.

There are some big questions about what happens from here. I shudder to think how well this ‘legitimacy’ gambit may play out for the military internationally, given how preoccupied everyone is with the state of democracy elsewhere. Myanmar may find itself at the back of the queue again. Realignments within the military are certain to come.

The incoming parliament will convene in March, Min Aung Hlaing has told voters. These elections have long been seen as an off-ramp for him into a presidency, but Tatmadaw tea leaves have always been a bit beyond me, so we’ll have to return to that.

I keep thinking about how in international media there’s an inverse relationship between how much coverage Myanmar receives and how hard local and regional journalists work to get these stories out. I think as the whole world gets more and more focused on Europe and the US and the rest of the Global North, it’s really important for us as people in and around and of the region to keep Myanmar at the top of mind. We have to because I’m worried no one else will.

The results

Here we go, here are some numbers. The Union Election Commission says the military-aligned Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) picked up 231 of 263 seats in the Pyithu Hluttaw, the country’s lower house, as per Xinhua. ‘The Shan and Nationalities Democratic Party won seven seats, while the Mon Unity Party and the Pa-O National Organisation Party each secured five seats. The remaining elected seats were shared among nine other political parties,’ reports the wire.

Upper house counting and the regional races continue, the Associated Press reports.

Who even voted?

One of the most bizarre parts of this fake attempt at conferring legitimacy via an election is that huge chunks of the country haven’t been able to vote at all. Any area of the country not under the junta’s control — and that’s a large section! — were not able to vote. And so many parties had fallen foul of bullshit election law regulations the options were severely curtailed to only the aligned or the unthreatening.

Voters in Yangon’s Tamwe Township stayed home on Sunday. The constituency had come out en masse in support of U Win Myint, president leading up to the 2021 coup and detained ever since, in 2018 and 2020. One resident told the Irrawaddy they’d been checking out polling booths, where would-be voters barely numbered into the double digits: “In others I didn’t see a single person casting a ballot. The difference is huge. People aren’t interested. My friends don’t even know whether their names are on the voter list and I don’t know if mine is either.”

A People’s Pioneer Party (PPP) candidate told the Irrawaddy they believed around 10 percent of the Township’s 83,000 voters bothered. “The turnout is nowhere near 2015 or 2020. Public interest in politics has collapsed. There were tight controls on campaigning, and we couldn’t mobilize freely like before.”

For first time voters it’s a surreal introduction to Myanmar’s “democracy.” Ma Moe Moe, 22, told Frontier Myanmar that she voted for the first time during the late-December round and largely because of pressure from local administrators. Ma Moe Moe (a pseudonym) voted in Yangon’s South Dagon Township and had planned on a protest vote. But voting machines rather than paper ballots meant this was not possible.

“I ended up voting, but I didn’t even know the parties. I only knew the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. I just pressed a random button because I couldn’t make my vote invalid by destroying the ballot or leaving it blank,” she said.

What I think is so interesting about Ma Moe Moe’s comments is that it’s so clear she’s not disengaged politically — “The military is only holding it for its own benefit. They’re just trying to gain international legitimacy as a legal government,” she says — it’s that this is such a charade it’s a pure waste of time to think too much about it.

What’s the world saying?

China last year had endorsed the election plans, with its ambition for stability (and access) next door, no matter the shape. “China congratulated Myanmar on a steady and orderly general election with active turnout,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told media on Monday in Beijing, as per the Irrawaddy.

One analyst doesn’t believe the hype, telling the outlet: “China will keep protecting the military no matter what it does. Even now, what China is saying — that the election went smoothly and that people voted — is just echoing the junta’s claims. China doesn’t care which government is in power; it only thinks about doing business and making profits.”

Seems to me the other powerful neighbour, India, has so far gotten away with not saying much at all. It’s in an odd position for India, where the elections were also effectively endorsed last year, but, unlike China, the country had to worry about the deep hypocrisy involved while spruiking Delhi’s democratic credentials. I’m watching!!

It’s a hot topic this week in Cebu City, Philippines, which is hosting Asean’s first major event of the year. The Foreign Ministers’ Meeting concluded yesterday and all kinda the same on that front. The Five Point Consensus remains the core of Asean’s response to the crisis, but divisions do appear to be deepening between member states. Philippine Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro told media that the bloc had not reached a consensus on endorsing the results or declining to do so — which is a real shame because not reaching a consensus seems to me not different to declining to do so. A month into 2026 and I can already see that can getting kicked over to Singapore for 2027.

Myanmar prepares for final election phase with outcome decided — Cape Diamond, Nikkei Asia

Myanmar’s military regime holds the final round of its three-phase general election on Sunday, with the outcome already decided and analysts warning that the process will change little in the civil war-ravaged country.

Myanmar’s “general’s election” has failed before it has even started — Ma Thida

Zaw Min Tun’s statement came soon after New Zealand parliamentarians described Myanmar’s impending election as “not a general election” but rather “a general’s election.” The remark captures precisely the nature and intent of the electoral process set to kick off on 28 December and running through to 25 January, designed not to restore the democracy smothered by Myanmar’s 2021 military coup but rather to entrench military control. Multiple intergovernmental bodies such as the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have publicly signalled that they will not recognise the election, calling it neither free nor credible and refusing to engage with it as a legitimate democratic process.

5 years on from the junta’s coup, Myanmar’s flawed elections can’t unite a country at risk of breaking apart — Adam Simpson and Nicholas Farrelly, the Conversation

The multi-stage elections were being held in only a fraction of the country currently under the military’s authority. Elections were not held in opposition-held territory, so many otherwise eligible voters were disenfranchised.

As such, there is no serious opposition to the military’s proxy, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). Civil and political space is also heavily restricted, with criticism of the election itself being a criminal offence.