Military proxy party in Myanmar holds rallies as campaigning begins for regime elections

ro-military political parties in Myanmar kicked off their election campaigns on Tuesday, two months ahead of scheduled national polls that are widely seen as an effort to confer legitimacy on the military’s 2021 seizure of power, even as the country’s civil war precludes voting in many areas.

Campaigning began just a day after U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, in a meeting with leaders of Southeast Asian nations, warned that the planned election could cause further instability and deepen Myanmar’s crisis.

Critics of the military regime in Naypyidaw, which seized power during the 2021 coup, charge that the polls, which are set to begin on Dec. 28, will be neither free nor fair.

Fifty-seven parties have registered for the contest but Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), which won the last two elections by landslides only to be ousted by the army, is not among them.

It was one of dozens of parties ordered disbanded by the regime Union Election Commission (UEC) more than two years ago after it refused to take part in what it saw as a sham process.

On Tuesday, the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) held ceremonies in the capital Naypyidaw and Yangon, the country’s largest city, to unveil its campaign slogan “Stronger Myanmar.”