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.

Soon after the coup, people resisted through nationwide protests and a civil disobedience movement, followed by an armed resistance to defend themselves against junta atrocities. Throughout 2023, the military suffered major territorial and manpower losses, particularly after Operation 1027, launched by the Three Brotherhood Alliance, which dealt a severe blow to junta forces. By 2024, the military controlled only about 21% of the country, while the People’s Defence Forces (PDF) and ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) held roughly 42%.

Meanwhile, the junta intensified its campaign of violence. As stated in the September 2025 ANFREL report, between 1 April 2022 and 9 September 2025, there were 32,267 conflict-related deaths, including 8,001 civilians, along with over 2,500 airstrikes and more than 4 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) since the coup. This is not counting the devastation of the 7.7-magnitude earthquake that struck on 28 March 2025 with its epicentre in Sagaing, near Mandalay, which claimed 3,800 lives and left 5,100 injured (as of April 2025). In the aftermath, the junta worsened the crisis by selectively accepting humanitarian aid only from its allies while continuing airstrikes against its own population, even as rescue operations were underway. Most recently, in early October 2025, an army paraglider attack on a Buddhist festival killed 24 people.

Given these circumstances—where the........

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