YANGON, Myanmar (AFP) — Voters trickled to Myanmar’s heavily restricted polls on Sunday, with the ruling junta touting the exercise as a return to democracy five years after it ousted the last elected government and triggered a civil war.

Former civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi remains jailed, while her hugely popular party has been dissolved and was not taking part.

Campaigners, Western diplomats and the United Nations’ rights chief have all condemned the phased month-long vote, citing a ballot stacked with military allies and a stark crackdown on dissent.

The pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party is widely expected to emerge as the largest bloc, in what critics say would be a rebranding of martial rule.

“We guarantee it to be a free and fair election,” junta chief Min Aung Hlaing told reporters after casting his ballot in the capital Naypyidaw.

“It’s organized by the military, we can’t let our name be tarnished.”

The Southeast Asian nation of around 50 million people is riven by civil war and there will be no voting in areas controlled by rebel factions that have risen up to challenge military rule.

While opposition factions threatened to attack the election, there were no reports of violence against polling day activities by the time voting ended at 4 p.m. 

Limited turnout 

Snaking queues of voters formed for the previous election in 2020, which the military declared void a few months later when it ousted Aung San Suu Kyi and seized power.

But when a polling station near her vacant home closed on Sunday, only around 470 of its roughly 1,700 registered voters had cast ballots, an election official said — a turnout of less than 28 percent.

Its first voter, Bo Saw, 63, said the election “will bring the best for the country.”

“The first priority should be restoring a safe and peaceful situation,” he told Agence France-Presse.

At a downtown Yangon station near the gleaming Sule Pagoda — the site of huge pro-democracy protests after the 2021 coup — 45-year-old Swe Maw dismissed international criticism. 

“There are always people who like and dislike,” he said at a polling station that later reported a turnout of below 37 percent.

The run-up saw none of the feverish public rallies that Aung San Suu Kyi once commanded, and the junta has waged a withering pre-vote offensive to claw back territory.

“I don’t think this election will change or improve the political situation in this country,” said 23-year-old Hman Thit, displaced by the post-coup conflict.

“I think the air strikes and atrocities on our hometowns will continue,” he said in a rebel-held area of Pekon township in Shan state.

The military ruled Myanmar for most of its post-independence history, before a 10-year interlude saw a civilian government take the reins in a burst of optimism and reform.

However, Min Aung Hlaing snatched power in a coup, alleging widespread voter fraud, after Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party trounced pro-military opponents in the 2020 elections.

The military put down pro-democracy protests and many activists quit the cities to fight as guerrillas alongside ethnic minority armies that have long held sway in Myanmar’s fringes.

There is no official death toll for Myanmar’s civil war and estimates vary widely, but global conflict monitoring group ACLED tallies media reports of violence and estimates that 90,000 people have been killed on all sides since the coup.

Aung San Suu Kyi is serving a 27-year sentence on charges that rights groups dismiss as politically motivated.

“I don’t think she would consider these elections to be meaningful in any way,” her son Kim Aris said from his home in Britain.