Covering Myanmar Elections: A Record of Broken Promises

The Myanmar people, or at least some of them, have been to the polls, and it’s the sixth time I have covered such an event for international and regional media. This time it was easy, because the exercise was obviously a military-orchestrated mockery of how elections should be held. The National League for Democracy (NLD) and all other major pro-democracy parties had been dissolved for failing to re-register under the rules of a new, strict Political Parties Registration Law, which the junta enacted in January 2023. Other draconian laws specifically designed to crush any form of dissent or criticism were also introduced, primarily the July 2025 Law on the Protection of Multiparty Democratic General Elections from Obstruction, Disruption, and Destruction, under which violators could face years in prison and even the death penalty.

Not to anybody’s surprise, the military’s own political outfit, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), scored what officials called a landslide victory, capturing 341 of the available 420 seats in both houses of parliament. The rest went to smaller, military-aligned parties and then, as before, the 2008 Constitution gives the armed forces a quarter of the seats in both houses of parliament. The new parliament—and, especially, the government—will be dominated by former military officers who have become “civilians.” Under their governance, any kind of change to the fundamental, military-dominated power structure is out of the question and, moreover, after lessons learned from the 2011-2021 decade of relative openness, it is highly unlikely that kind of policy will be repeated.

The first election I covered was the one that was held in May 1990. It was surprisingly free and fair and resulted in a massive, landslide victory for the NLD. The party captured 392 of the 485 seats contested in elections to the 492-member assembly, which the military authorities had pledged would function as a unicameral Pyithu Hluttaw, or national parliament. Several foreign correspondents were allowed to witness the elections, but I was not one of them. I was still on the military’s blacklist but was able to cover events from Bangkok.

There was understandably jubilation inside the country and among the many people of different nationalities who had fled to Thailand after the bloody events of August-September 1988. The military’s National Unity Party (NUP), previously known as the ruling Burma Socialist Programme Party, had been roundly defeated, winning in only 10 constituencies.