Myanmar to hold general election in December 2025 or January 2026

Myanmar's junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing

Myanmar's military government will hold a general election in December 2025 or January 2026, state media said on March 8, citing the junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.

This is the first time a specific time frame is announced for the long-promised polls in the war-torn nation.

The junta leader, has vowed to hold an election but his administration repeatedly extended a state of emergency, even as the military is battered by a collection of anti-junta opposition groups.

Myanmar has been turmoil since early 2021, when the military ousted an elected civilian government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, triggering a protest movement that morphed into an armed rebellion against the junta across the Southeast Asian country.

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, Reuters reported citing local media.

"Fifty-three political parties have already submitted their lists to participate in the election," he said.

The junta was able to conduct a full, on-the-ground census in only 145 of the country's 330 townships to prepare voter lists for the elections, according to a census report published in December.

The four years after the army's takeover on February 1, 2021, have created a profound situation of multiple, overlapping crises with nearly half the population in poverty and the economy in disarray, the UN Development Program said.

The UN Human Rights Office said the military ramped up violence against civilians last year to unprecedented levels, inflicting the heaviest civilian death toll since the army takeover as its grip on power eroded.

The army launched wave after wave of retaliatory airstrikes and artillery shelling on civilians and civilian populated areas, forced thousands of young people into military service, conducted arbitrary arrests and prosecutions, caused mass displacement, and denied access to humanitarians, even in the face of natural disasters, the rights office said in a statement.

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.

Also Read | Magnitude 5.8 earthquake strikes Myanmar-India border, GFZ says