Myanmar’s military regime is preparing to hold national elections beginning at the end of December – the first polls since the freshly re-elected National League for Democracy (NLD) administration was ousted by a coup in February 2021, fuelling an armed conflict that has since killed thousands. The military sought to justify its coup on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations of massive electoral fraud by the NLD, vowing at the time to hold new “free and fair multiparty democratic elections”. But a climate of political repression and violence, widespread insecurity, highly restrictive new electoral laws, the non-participation of most major parties, and cancellations of the polls across swathes of the country not under the regime’s control mean that these long-delayed elections are devoid of credibility.

The NLD’s top leaders – deposed State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint – remain incarcerated and incommunicado. The party itself, which won some 82 per cent of elected parliamentary seats in 2020, refused to register for polls held by an illegitimate authority, prompting the regime’s election commission to order its dissolution. Nearly all other parties that performed strongly in the 2020 elections have faced the same fate, leaving the military-established Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) in pole position.

The elections are taking place against a backdrop of raging armed conflict involving post-coup revolutionary forces seeking the overthrow of the regime alongside numerous ethnic armed groups that have long been fighting for greater autonomy in their respective homelands. Most of these groups are opposed to the elections, which they consider illegitimate, and some have vowed to disrupt them. More broadly, a large section of the electorate is vehemently against the polls, which many people see as an attempt to overturn the NLD’s 2020 victory and bring a veneer of rightful authority to military rule; many others are apathetic.

Much of the world, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – of which Myanmar is a member – has also been critical of the polls, given the military’s illegal seizure of power, the climate of violence and fear, and the fact that only a fraction of the population will be able – or willing – to participate. While Belarus, China and Russia will observe the polls, no reputable international observer mission will be involved, further undermining their perceived legitimacy.

These elections are not intended to be a genuine popular consultation. They are a procedural mechanism, required by the military-drafted 2008 constitution in order for the junta to shift from the post-coup state of emergency back to constitutional rule. The charter enshrines power sharing between the military and an elected government – and takes for granted that only a military-backed party should be allowed to win. Former President Thein Sein (2011-2016) deviated from this plan by allowing genuinely competitive polls, however, opening the door to Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD victories in the 2012 by-elections and the 2015 elections, followed by another landslide in 2020. The military carried out the coup, and is now organising these new polls, with the aim of resetting Myanmar’s politics – above all, by returning to the constitutional arrangement that it originally envisaged when drawing up the 2008 charter, under which it transferred power to a semi-civilian government after decades of military rule, without giving up ultimate control.

While the main rationale for holding the vote is a domestic one, the regime considers that administering elections, even if partial and imperfect, signals political strength and could serve as the impetus for many countries, especially in South East Asia, to normalise diplomatic ties with Naypyitaw. China, which has been more actively supporting the junta diplomatically and militarily since 2024, has been pushing the regime to proceed with the polls without further delay, viewing them as a pathway to more predictable decision-making than that occurring under the current autocratic setup. Beijing prefers to deal with a civilian rather than a military administration.

The elections will be held in three rounds, on 28 December and then 11 and 25 January 2026. The first round will take place in 102 townships (of the 330 in the country), the second in an additional 100 townships and the third in up to 72. The election commission has already cancelled polling in a further 56 townships that are not under the regime’s control, and authorities will likely announce more cancellations closer to the vote when it becomes clear that security conditions or lack of access would prevent polls from taking place. That said, only token territorial control is required to hold the vote in a given location: under the law, a single polling station in a constituency is sufficient for the election to be valid, even if it is situated on an army base. In effect, a large proportion of the eligible voters will be unable to cast their ballots, even if they were inclined to.

For the first time, the elections will use a complex combination of two very different systems: the previous single-member, first-past-the-post constituencies – where the winning candidate is the one with the largest number of votes (without requiring an absolute majority) – and multi-member, proportional representation constituencies, in which several seats are allocated to parties using a quota-and-remainder formula based on their share of the vote in the constituency. Smaller parties have long advocated for the introduction of proportional representation to remedy the disproportionate benefit that first-past-the-post systems give to larger parties. The complexity of the mixed system makes the results less transparent, however, and will raise concerns about manipulation. 

Elections will take place for three separate legislative levels: the upper house (168 seats, half of which will be filled by proportional representation); the lower house (330 seats, all first-past-the-post); and fourteen state/region legislatures (using a mixture of first-past-the-post and proportional representation). In addition to these elected seats, the military has a constitutionally mandated quota of 25 per cent of seats in all legislatures, appointed directly by the commander-in-chief. In practice, because some elected seats will be vacant due to electoral cancellations, the military’s proportion will be higher.

A total of 57 parties will compete, but none represents the broad anti-military sentiment that prevailed in the previous two polls. Only six parties are fielding candidates nationwide, including the military-affiliated USDP, which is running more than a thousand candidates – by far the largest number – and is already certain of securing 28 lower house seats, in races where it is running unopposed. The rest of the country’s political parties have taken the procedurally less onerous option of registering only in a single state or region (where they can contest seats in the local legislature as well as the corresponding upper and lower house seats).

Despite the USDP being in by far the strongest position, the regime is taking no chances, moving to limit any chance of serious competition. One national party – the National Democratic Force, which broke away from the NLD to contest the 2010 elections and has cooperated with the regime since the coup – was deregistered by the election commission in September for failing to meet the legally stipulated minimum number of party offices and members, though the party claims it comfortably met those requirements. A prominent establishment politician and businesswoman – Thet Thet Khine, who heads the People’s Pioneer Party – was also disqualified in October for having “unresolved liabilities to the state or public” (in the form of a delinquent business debt to a local bank), a newly added legal provision; the party, however, is still contesting the polls. These decisions illustrate the anxiety prevailing in the regime, as neither of these parties posed any real threat to USDP dominance.

Violence around the elections is already occurring and will almost certainly intensify. The risks come from three overlapping dynamics: the regime’s coercive enforcement of the polls, widespread opposition to the electoral process and the sheer vulnerability of election infrastructure in a country at war.

First, the military is using heavy-handed methods to suppress even mild dissent. Peaceful critics of the polls have been arrested in large numbers – more than 100 in recent weeks – and courts are handing down harsh sentences for symbolic acts of defiance. In Yangon, for example, three young artists who put up anti-election posters received prison terms of 42 to 49 years, and in Mawlamyine, a 65-year-old man was jailed for seventeen years after throwing stones at a local administrative office and tearing down a candidate list. While intended to deter opposition to the electoral process, these actions deepen public anger at the regime.

Secondly, resistance forces have explicitly rejected the elections and some are conducting targeted attacks to disrupt them or punish individuals they see as collaborating. November saw a string of such incidents: an ethnic party candidate was abducted by an unidentified armed group in Shan State; a USDP official in Mandalay Region was fatally stabbed; another party official in Tanintharyi Region had his house burned down; and a party member in Bago was stabbed. Resistance groups also claimed responsibility for attacks on party offices and election officials, including a grenade thrown at a USDP office in Bago that reportedly injured two soldiers and two paramilitary personnel. More such incidents are likely as the voting period approaches.

Thirdly, polling itself presents a range of soft targets for anyone intent on disrupting the process. Thousands of polling stations – mostly schools and small administrative buildings – will be used as voting sites, staffed mainly by schoolteachers who, as state employees, can be forced to participate. Both the polling staff and the ad hoc local security teams are poorly protected, making them highly vulnerable to attack. The same applies to voters, whom authorities may also coerce into casting ballots in order to bolster the election’s ostensible legitimacy. But even if people are voting under duress, resistance forces may view them as complicit – and therefore as potential targets.

While the scale of incidents will vary across the country, the interaction of repression, armed resistance and widespread public hostility to the polls ensures that the voting period will be fraught, with real risks to civilians and administrative personnel.

The outcome is hardly in doubt: a resounding USDP victory and a continuation of army rule with a thin civilian veneer. The military brass may consider this result a success of sorts, as it will mark a return to their vision for the country as encapsulated in the 2008 constitution. But it will in no way ease Myanmar’s political crisis or weaken the resolve of a determined armed resistance. Instead, it will likely harden political divisions and prolong Myanmar’s state failure. The new administration, which will take power in April 2026, will have few better options, little credibility and likely no feasible strategy for moving the country in a positive direction.

For Min Aung Hlaing himself, greater uncertainty lies ahead. He has remained unchallenged as leader since the coup, concentrating power and economic resources in his own hands despite presiding over a period of political, economic and battlefield turmoil. Giving up some of that power comes with risks. But the constitution divides power among several individuals: the president, commander-in-chief and parliamentary speaker. Min Aung Hlaing will have to pick one. Or perhaps he will create an extra-constitutional position of supreme power akin to Deng Xiaoping’s chairmanship of China’s Central Military Commission in the late 20^th century – albeit in very different political circumstances. But one way or another, he will require loyalists to occupy key posts, and there is no guarantee that they will remain compliant, especially as he may not have a completely free hand in appointments. Following five years of absolute concentration of power in Min Aung Hlaing’s hands, other senior officers will welcome the new administration’s formation as an opportunity to jostle for position and economic advantage. A USDP landslide would also confer considerable power on party leader Khin Yi, a political veteran who is senior to Min Aung Hlaing in age and in Defence Services Academy cohort – an important aspect of hierarchy within the officer corps.

While military-run elections will not result in meaningful pluralism, it is conceivable that they could generate new political conditions in Naypyitaw by diluting Min Aung Hlaing’s power and introducing additional decision-makers, who might compete with one another. But these changes are unlikely to shift the country toward a more peaceful future in the medium term. The new administration may well deploy the military’s longstanding approach of brokering selective ceasefires with individual ethnic armed groups, enabling it to freeze some of the many fronts it is currently fighting on and concentrate forces elsewhere. This tactic could yield temporary lulls in fighting in parts of the country. But it will do little to address the deeper causes of the conflict – struggles for minority rights and autonomy, as well as the involvement of the military in politics. Crucially, the new administration is unlikely to offer talks to post-coup resistance forces, only incentives to surrender. A credible, inclusive peace process remains off the table.

Externally, opportunities to influence Naypyitaw remain limited. It is vital that foreign governments avoid steps that lend legitimacy to these deeply flawed elections. To begin with, they should not send observer missions. Neither should they recognise the results, or the administration that emerges from the polls, as legitimate. Though it will be tempted to follow China’s lead and re-engage with the Myanmar authorities, ASEAN should maintain its political quarantine, excluding political representation from Naypyitaw in high-level meetings until it implements the core elements of the Five Point Consensus the grouping agreed to back in 2021, articulated around the need for an immediate end to violence and a credible national dialogue.

There is also a humanitarian imperative for foreign states and international bodies involved in Myanmar. A flawed election process that produces no political stability will do little to improve humanitarian conditions or economic governance. More than 20 million people across Myanmar – over a third of the population – are currently in need of humanitarian assistance, some 3.5 million of them displaced. Myanmar’s people will continue to pay a high price for state failure and conflict, at a time when global aid budgets are shrinking. Given the current funding environment, innovative approaches are needed to sustain critical programs, including support for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Failure to do so would not only be a humanitarian lapse but would also amplify the effects of Myanmar’s crisis on its neighbours, including larger refugee and migrant flows, expanded organised crime networks, and increased public health challenges such as higher rates of communicable disease.