Federica Cidale
More than four years after seizing power in the February 2021 coup, Myanmar’s military junta set 28 December 2025 as the date for a nationwide general election: less a commitment to democratic transition than an attempt to manufacture legitimacy. After nearly half a century of military dictatorship, the National League for Democracy (NLD) won consecutive landslide victories in the 2015 and 2020 elections. In response to the 2020 general election results, the military baselessly claimed voter fraud as justification for its coup, with junta leader Min Aung Hlaing asserting that “there was terrible fraud in the voter list during the democratic general election.” However, the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) affirmed that the 2020 results reflected the genuine will of the people and found no evidence of widespread fraud. Although Min Aung Hlaing pledged to ‘restore democracy’, in July 2023 the junta once again postponed the elections, extending the state of emergency and claiming it needed more time to prepare. Although the junta did not announce the long-awaited election date until August 2025, the repeated delay was unsurprising given its deteriorating control over Myanmar.
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