YANGON: The military junta in Myanmar will likely hold elections in 2025, officials from military-approved political parties told AFP on Tuesday.
“Elections are likely to be held in 2025,” a senior member of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party told AFP. A member of another junta-approved party confirmed the news.
Thirty-six political parties have been granted permission to take part in any future polls, the junta-stacked election commission said on Tuesday, without giving a date for when they would be held.
After seizing power in February 2021, the military said it was hoping to stage elections as soon as conditions stabilised. The latest proposed date for holding polls came and went last month but the country remains under a state of emergency.
If and when polls are held, the National League for Democracy (NLD) party, the overwhelming winner of the 2020 polls, will not be represented. The party led by Aung San Suu Kyi has been dissolved for failing to re-register under a tough new military-drafted electoral law. The complicated new rules are also expected to bar many other parties not aligned with the military.
Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing called for “necessary preparations” to be completed ahead of a national census in 2024, the state-backed Global New Light of Myanmar reported on Saturday.
An election can only take place after a census has been completed, the newspaper reported him as saying.
The United States has said any elections under the junta would be a “sham” and analysts say they would be targeted by the junta’s opponents.
The military justified its February 2021 coup with unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud in 2020 elections won resoundingly by the NLD.