YANGON: Myanmar’s junta said Monday that long-promised elections will start on December 28, despite a raging civil war that has put much of the country out of its control, and international monitors slating the poll as a charade.
Myanmar has been consumed by conflict since the military deposed the government of democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, making unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud.
Swathes of the country are beyond military control — administered by a myriad of pro-democracy guerrillas and powerful ethnic armed organizations which have pledged to block polls in their enclaves.
“The first phase of the multi-party democratic general election for each parliament will begin on Sunday 28 December 2025,” Myanmar’s Union Election Commission said in a statement.
“Dates for the subsequent phases will be announced later,” the statement added.
Myanmar’s civil war has killed thousands, left more than half the nation in poverty, and more than 3.5 million people living displaced.
The junta has touted elections as a way to end the conflict and offered cash rewards to opposition fighters willing to lay down their arms ahead of the vote.
However Suu Kyi remains jailed, while many opposition lawmakers ousted by the coup are boycotting it and a UN expert has branded the vote a “fraud” designed to rebrand continuing military rule.
Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is currently ruling Myanmar as acting president, also serving as the chief of the armed forces which has ruled the country for most of its post-independence history.
Analysts say the election will likely see Min Aung Hlaing maintain his power over any new government.
Meanhile, they say, the vote may cause further splits in already fractious array of opposition groups as they weigh whether to participate in the poll.
A census held last year as preparation for the election estimated it failed to collect data from 19 million of the country’s 51 million people, provisional results said.
The results cited “significant security constraints” as one reason for the shortfall — giving a sign of how limited the reach of the election may be amid the civil war.
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Myanmar junta sets December 28 poll date despite raging civil war
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Myanmar junta sets December 28 poll date despite raging civil war
- Myanmar has been consumed by conflict since the military deposed the government of democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, making unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud
’Weak by design’ African Union gathers for summit
ADDIS ABABA: The African Union (AU) holds its annual summit in Ethiopia this weekend at a time of genocide, myriad insurgencies and coups stretching from one end of the continent to the other, for which it has few answers.
The AU, formed in 2002, has 55 member states who are often on opposing sides of conflicts. They have routinely blocked attempts to hand real enforcement power to the AU that could constrain their action, leaving it under-funded and under-equipped.
It has missed successive deadlines to make itself self-funding — in 2020 and 2025. Today, it still relies for 64 percent of its annual budget on the United States and European Union, who are cutting back support.
Its chairman, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, is reduced to expressing “deep concern” over the continent’s endless crises — from wars in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo to insurgencies across the Sahel — but with limited scope to act.
“At a time when the AU is needed the most, it is arguably at its weakest since it was inaugurated,” said the International Crisis Group (ICG) in a recent report.
- Ignoring own rules -
With 10 military coups in Africa since 2020, the AU has been forced to ignore the rule in its charter that coup-leaders must not stand for elections. Gabon and Guinea, suspended after their coups, were reinstated this past year despite breaking that rule.
Meanwhile, there has been no “deep concern” over a string of elections marred by rigging and extreme violence.
Youssouf was quick to congratulate Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan after she won 98 percent in a vote in October in which all leading opponents were barred or jailed and thousands of protesters were killed by security forces.
The AU praised the “openness” of an election in Burundi in June described by Human Rights Watch as “dominated by repression (and) censorship.”
The problem, said Benjamin Auge, of the French Institute of International Relations, is that few African leaders care about how they are viewed abroad as they did in the early days after independence.
“There are no longer many presidents with pan-African ambitions,” he told AFP.
“Most of the continent’s leaders are only interested in their internal problems. They certainly don’t want the AU to interfere in domestic matters,” he added.
- AU ‘supports dialogue’ -
AU representatives point out that its work stretches far beyond conflict, with bodies doing valuable work on health, development, trade and much more.
Spokesman Nuur Mohamud Sheekh told AFP that its peace efforts went unnoticed because they were measured in conflicts that were prevented.
“The AU has helped de-escalate political tensions and support dialogue before situations descend into violence,” he said, citing the work done to prevent war between Sudan and South Sudan over the flashpoint region of Abyei.
But African states show little interest in building up an organization that might constrain them.
Power remains instead with the AU Assembly, made up of individual heads of state, including the three longest-ruling non-royals in the world: Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea (46 years), Paul Biya of Cameroon (44) and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda (40).
“The African Union is weak because its members want it that way,” wrote two academics for The Conversation last year.
This weekend, the rotating presidency of the AU assembly passes to Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye, fresh from his party’s 97-percent election victory.
Coups, conflicts and rights abuses may get discussed, but the main theme is water sanitation.
The AU, formed in 2002, has 55 member states who are often on opposing sides of conflicts. They have routinely blocked attempts to hand real enforcement power to the AU that could constrain their action, leaving it under-funded and under-equipped.
It has missed successive deadlines to make itself self-funding — in 2020 and 2025. Today, it still relies for 64 percent of its annual budget on the United States and European Union, who are cutting back support.
Its chairman, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, is reduced to expressing “deep concern” over the continent’s endless crises — from wars in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo to insurgencies across the Sahel — but with limited scope to act.
“At a time when the AU is needed the most, it is arguably at its weakest since it was inaugurated,” said the International Crisis Group (ICG) in a recent report.
- Ignoring own rules -
With 10 military coups in Africa since 2020, the AU has been forced to ignore the rule in its charter that coup-leaders must not stand for elections. Gabon and Guinea, suspended after their coups, were reinstated this past year despite breaking that rule.
Meanwhile, there has been no “deep concern” over a string of elections marred by rigging and extreme violence.
Youssouf was quick to congratulate Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan after she won 98 percent in a vote in October in which all leading opponents were barred or jailed and thousands of protesters were killed by security forces.
The AU praised the “openness” of an election in Burundi in June described by Human Rights Watch as “dominated by repression (and) censorship.”
The problem, said Benjamin Auge, of the French Institute of International Relations, is that few African leaders care about how they are viewed abroad as they did in the early days after independence.
“There are no longer many presidents with pan-African ambitions,” he told AFP.
“Most of the continent’s leaders are only interested in their internal problems. They certainly don’t want the AU to interfere in domestic matters,” he added.
- AU ‘supports dialogue’ -
AU representatives point out that its work stretches far beyond conflict, with bodies doing valuable work on health, development, trade and much more.
Spokesman Nuur Mohamud Sheekh told AFP that its peace efforts went unnoticed because they were measured in conflicts that were prevented.
“The AU has helped de-escalate political tensions and support dialogue before situations descend into violence,” he said, citing the work done to prevent war between Sudan and South Sudan over the flashpoint region of Abyei.
But African states show little interest in building up an organization that might constrain them.
Power remains instead with the AU Assembly, made up of individual heads of state, including the three longest-ruling non-royals in the world: Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea (46 years), Paul Biya of Cameroon (44) and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda (40).
“The African Union is weak because its members want it that way,” wrote two academics for The Conversation last year.
This weekend, the rotating presidency of the AU assembly passes to Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye, fresh from his party’s 97-percent election victory.
Coups, conflicts and rights abuses may get discussed, but the main theme is water sanitation.
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