This article was first published on Central European Institute of Asian Studies
Myanmar’s junta is staging elections amid an ongoing civil war not to restore democracy but to manufacture legitimacy. The vote is designed to entrench military rule and provide international cover for continued violence.
Key takeaways:
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The sham elections are an attempt to legitimize military rule. International actors should side with the public’s continued rejection of military coup leaders.
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There is no path to liberalization or dialogue: the military leadership is fighting for survival. As a result, conflict resolution through an election is implausible.
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International endorsement is likely to fuel further violence. Treating the election as credible could normalize relations with an illegitimate regime and embolden its reliance on force.
A race for legitimacy
Myanmar’s military seized power from a democratically elected government in a coup in 2021. In the early hours of February 1, as parliament was due to reconvene for its new term, the military detained elected leaders. Overnight, a civilian government whose popularity was increasingly threatening the military’s long-standing dominance in national politics was overthrown.
The coup’s consequences were immediate and far-reaching. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets and civil servants refused to work, effectively paralyzing government institutions. When the military responded with brutal repression, tens of thousands took up arms. Drawing on their electoral mandate, ousted lawmakers formed a parallel government in exile: the National Unity Government (NUG), which sought to unite resistance forces that had emerged across the country under the banner of People’s Defense Forces and declared a people’s defensive war in September 2021.
Myanmar slid into a full-scale civil war. Pro-democracy resistance groups allied with long-standing ethnic revolutionary organizations (EROs), which have fought the military for decades in pursuit of greater autonomy for their regions. Following joint offensives in late 2023, the military came close to collapse, an outcome that the junta’s authoritarian allies, including Russia and China, helped avert.
From day one, the junta has tried to justify the coup and manufacture legitimacy. It began by advancing unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud by the incumbent National League for Democracy (NLD), which had won a landslide in the 2020 general election. It then repeatedly promised a general election, invoking the 2008 constitution’s requirement that a new vote be held within six months of a state of emergency. Yet as the conflict escalated and the military found itself on the back foot, the state of emergency was extended beyond constitutional limits, and the election was postponed again and again.
With support from its authoritarian allies, particularly China, the junta has regrouped and reclaimed some lost territory, and announced in July 2025 that it would hold elections in December and January. This time, the vote carries added symbolic significance: it coincides with the impending expiration of the NUG’s electoral mandate, on which it grounds its authority.
The junta claims that a three-phased election—beginning on 28 December and expected to deliver results by late January—will promote stability and pave the way back to civilian rule. But this narrative cannot mask a brutal reality marked by an escalation of junta air strikes, urban destruction, and civilian massacres. By mimicking democratic norms, the junta seeks to legitimize its continued military rule at home and abroad. Domestically, it hopes to consolidate political domination and project effective control, which remains elusive. Internationally, it aims to signal a return to normalcy and encourage engagement, particularly from neighboring and regional powers.
No liberalization in sight: continued public rejection and protracted conflict
Widely criticized as non-inclusive and manipulated, the election is designed to ensure regime continuity by securing a victory for the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), a military-linked party. Unlike former military leader Than Shwe, who stepped aside when a nominally civilian government took office in 2011, Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing seeks to remain in office, so that the state continues to shield him. As such, liberalization comparable to Thein Sein’s USDP-led government between 2010 and 2015 is highly unlikely. This time around, the military is not pursuing reform; it is fighting for survival.
The USDP is the dominant party competing nationwide, while most opposition parties, including the NLD, are banned and their leaders imprisoned. As a result, 28 USDP candidates will automatically secure parliamentary seats because no opposing candidates are running. In the run-up to the election, Myanmar’s military authorities also cracked down on opponents by enforcing a new law that punishes criticism of the election with decade-long prison sentences. In some cases, offences are punishable by death. Against this backdrop, the USDP’s claim of an 80% landslide in the first round on 28 December comes as little surprise.
Holding an election amid raging conflict only underscores its fundamental lack of credibility. With more than half of the country controlled or fiercely contested by resistance groups, many townships are excluded from the vote. Meanwhile, mass atrocities and the killing of civilians continue, including the intentional aerial bombing of a civilian hospital that killed more than 30 people just two weeks before the election was due to begin.
The election is unlikely to consolidate the junta’s domestic power, given its lack of popular support. On December 10, International Human Rights Day, a nationwide silent strike was held to express the public’s rejection of the election. Prominent protest leaders who emerged from hiding to organize rallies in support of this protest are now being pursued by the junta.
Public opposition is also reflected in a poll published on November 8, the anniversary of Myanmar’s last free and fair election five years earlier. The Platform for People’s Movement conducted surveys and interviews between 27 October and 5 November with more than 3,600 participants across all 15 regions inside Myanmar and the diaspora. It found that 99% of respondents reject the 2021 military coup, 98% consider the junta’s December 2025 election unfair, 96% will not vote, and 98% don’t believe the election will solve the crisis.
The reported 52% turnout in the first phase is higher than these findings would suggest. Even so, it remains far below the roughly 70% turnout recorded in Myanmar’s previous free and fair elections in 2015 and 2020, and it cannot account for participation driven by coercion or fear.
In short, this election offers no meaningful path to political dialogue or a power-sharing arrangement—unlike the opening created by the NLD’s 2012 by-election victories. Instead, it is likely to deepen an already protracted conflict. Resistance forces remain determined to fight until the junta collapses. At the same time, the vote may reinforce the military’s sense of impunity and further entrench its reliance on violence and fear to stay in power.
Myanmar and the international arena
The election is also unlikely to improve Myanmar’s standing globally. Most international actors view the junta as an illegitimate regime waging war against its own people and remain deeply critical of its attempt to legitimize its rule. The junta’s primary concern, however, is relations with the neighboring countries, whose priority is not democratic reform but regional stability: limiting border insecurity, irregular migration, drug trafficking, cyber-scam operations and environmental damage. China, India and several ASEAN countries tend to treat the junta as necessary to maintain a functioning central authority in Myanmar. China, in particular, may see the elections as political cover to engage more openly with the junta in pursuit of its own economic and security interests, while pressuring EROs to accept ceasefires. Russia and Belarus have sent election observers to the elections (unlike China and ASEAN states) and pursue a similar strategy.
For the NUG and resistance groups, the election creates a strategic bind. Any action, even online, carries serious risks for supporters. At the same time, the vote leaves political space for the junta to claim a fresh mandate and attempt to erode the NUG’s symbolic authority, which rests on a popular mandate nearing expiry. However hollow the junta’s legitimacy may be, the elections may provide foreign governments with a convenient justification for normalizing relations with Myanmar. Yet the election is likely to trigger “another cycle of violence disguised as governance.” The global community should therefore refrain from endorsing the vote or treating it as a basis for renewed engagement with the regime.