Myanmar’s military government will hold a general election in December 2025 or January 2026, state media reported on Saturday, citing junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, who provided the first specific time frame for the long-promised polls in the war-torn country.
Myanmar has been turmoil since early 2021, when the military ousted the elected civilian government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, triggering a protest movement that has transformed into an armed rebellion against the junta across the country.
Min Aung Hlaing has vowed several times to hold an election but his administration repeatedly extended a state of emergency, even as his army is battered by a collection of anti-junta opposition groups and ethnic militias.
Critics have widely derided the promised polls as a sham to keep the generals in power through proxies, given that dozens of political parties have been banned and the junta has lost its grip over large parts of Myanmar.
“We plan to hold a free and fair election soon,” Min Aung Hlaing said during a visit to Belarus, where he announced the time frame, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.
“Fifty-three political parties have already submitted their lists to participate in the election,” he said.
It was not clear how many of those parties are aligned with opposition or ethnic minority groups. The new election law sharply increases the requirement for membership of political parties vying for seats nationwide to 100 times higher than what had been prescribed before the coup.
Because of widespread fighting, the junta was able to conduct a full, on-the-ground census in only 145 of the country’s 330 townships to prepare voters’ lists for the elections, according to a census report published in December.
The election also brings the risk of more violence as the junta and its opponents push to increase their control of territory in Myanmar, where the widening conflict has left the economy in tatters and displaced over 3.5 million people.
The National League for Democracy won the 2020 election by a landslide despite the military’s claims of voter fraud, which were dismissed by international observers. The military sacked the election commission and appointed a new body that subsequently reported it had found 11 million polling violations.