Kyaw Sai, a schoolteacher from Myanmar’s Shan State, did not recognize a single name on the electronic voting machine in front of him. He pressed a button anyway.
“I voted because I was afraid not to,” he says.
Myanmar was holding its first election as a 2021 military coup overthrew the civilian government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and plunged the country into civil war, and Mr. Sai knows the process was far from free or fair.
Why We Wrote this
Myanmar’s junta-backed party has secured an overwhelming victory in the country’s first elections since the military seized power in 2021. While the exercise was widely denounced as a sham, some in Myanmar hope it will inch the war-torn country toward democratic norms.
International election watchdogs have dismissed the exercise as a sham designed to legitimize continued military rule. Those allegations were bolstered this past week, when voting concluded and Myanmar’s military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party declared a sweeping victory. Major opposition groups, barred from the ballot, called for a boycott, arguing that participation only entrenched a system built on coercion.
Still, Mr. Sai hopes the election might introduce at least a minimal check on power in a country that has spent much of its post-independence history under military rule or armed conflict. He’s holding on to a belief that drives citizens to polling booths in autocracies around the world: that these elections, though imperfect, have to be better than nothing.
“It is indeed not an election under ideal conditions, as the military decides who is allowed to run and who is not,” he says. “I don’t believe this election will bring real democracy, but in a country like ours, even a small opening feels better than complete darkness.”
The point of a rigged election
That cautious hope contrasts sharply with myanmar’s broader reality. Since 2021, around 90,000 people have been killed in the country’s brutal civil war, and more than a million displaced, becoming one of Asia’s worst humanitarian crises.
Ms. Aung San suu Kyi remains imprisoned, serving a combined sentence of more than three decades on charges that include alleged election fraud. She denies the accusations, which self-reliant observers say lack credible evidence. Her party, the National League for Democracy, along with other major opposition groups, was barred from contesting the election.
Myanmar’s military government declared victory in widely condemned elections held Saturday, a move likely to further entrench its rule rather than resolve the country’s ongoing political crisis. The junta claims a landslide win,but the vote was boycotted by most opposition groups and marred by widespread reports of intimidation and low turnout.
International observers and analysts say the election’s success isn’t measured by democratic principles, but by whether it strengthens the military’s hold on power. “If it leads to greater international engagement with the regime, boosts confidence among elite allies at home, or weakens morale and external support for the democratic uprising, then it is a success for the junta,” says one analyst.
Gautam Mukhopadhaya, a former Indian ambassador to Myanmar, explains the military’s strategy. “It is an election held under the barrel of a gun,” he says. ”All major opposition parties have been disqualified, their leaders are either jailed or in exile, and turnout is very low.” The military’s primary objective, he adds, is to fulfill the requirements of the country’s 2008 constitution - drafted by the army – and use that legal framework to legitimize its continued authority, notably in the eyes of key partners like China and Russia, neither of which has formally recognized the elections.
