Myanmar votes under fire as junta stages first post-coup election

Polls have closed in Myanmar’s first general election since the military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in a 2021 coup, a tightly controlled vote held against the backdrop of a brutal civil war and widespread political repression.

Voting on Sunday took place in only about a third of the country’s 330 townships, with large swathes of Myanmar deemed inaccessible due to ongoing fighting between the military and armed opposition groups. In total, elections were cancelled outright in 65 townships, while two further rounds of voting are scheduled for January 11 and January 25.

In Yangon, the country’s largest city, polling stations opened at 6am local time and closed at 4pm.

The election has been widely dismissed by critics, including the United Nations, Western governments and human rights organisations, as neither free nor fair. Anti-military parties are not participating, and the political landscape has been hollowed out since the coup.

Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide victory in the 2020 election, remains in detention. Her party has been dissolved, and she is serving a 27-year prison sentence on charges widely viewed as politically motivated.

The pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) is expected to dominate the results.

Myanmar’s military leaders have framed the vote as a step towards national reconciliation and economic recovery. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the junta, cast his ballot in civilian clothes in the capital Naypyidaw shortly after polls opened, smiling as he displayed an ink-stained finger, a mark used to prevent multiple voting.

He later told reporters the election was free and fair and rejected criticism that the vote lacked legitimacy because it was organised by the military.

State media echoed that line. An opinion piece in the Global New Light of Myanmar said the election would open a new chapter and “serve as bridge for the people of Myanmar to reach a prosperous future”.

Ahead of the vote, the regime said election observers from Russia, China, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nicaragua and India had arrived in the country.