Myanmar junta chief admits election won’t be nationwide

Myanmar’s junta chief acknowledged on Wednesday that the military-backed administration will be unable to conduct the upcoming general election across the entire country, as a civil war triggered by the 2021 coup rages on.

Critics and many Western nations view the election — due to start in late December and the first since the coup — as a sham exercise to legitimise the military’s rule via proxy political parties. Dozens of anti-junta parties are either banned or refusing to take part.

The country has been in turmoil since the coup, which deposed an elected civilian government and triggered a nationwide armed rebellion that has wrested swathes of territory from the military.

The remarks by Min Aung Hlaing were his first public admission that the polls cannot be fully inclusive, days after he met Malaysia’s foreign minister and ahead of a summit of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations next week.