Pro-military party declares victory in junta-run polls

YANGON, Myanmar (AFP) — Myanmar’s dominant pro-military party has won junta-run elections, a party source told Agence France-Presse on Monday, after a month-long vote that democracy watchdogs dismissed as a rebranding of army rule.

While the military has said the election will return power to the people, popular democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi remains detained since the coup and her party has been dissolved, while critics say the ballot was stacked with army allies.

“We won a majority already,” a senior official from the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share preliminary results.

“We are in the position to form a new government,” they said, after the vote’s third and final phase took place on Sunday. “As we won in the election, we will move forward.”

Many analysts describe the USDP as a civilian proxy of the military which seized power in a 2021 coup, toppling the democratic government of Suu Kyi.

Voting was not held in huge patches of the country controlled by rebel factions fighting in the civil war, triggered by the coup — another hurdle cited by those questioning the poll’s mandate.

Official results are expected later this week.

Five years on from the coup, analysts say the military stage-managed the poll to give its rule a veneer of civilian legitimacy.

Touring Mandalay city polling stations in civilian dress on Sunday, junta chief Min Aung Hlaing declined to rule out serving as the new government’s president.

The position will be elected by a house majority of members of parliament after the legislature convenes in March.

“While the election results within Myanmar have never been in doubt, the election result that matters most is the response of the international community,” United Nations expert Tom Andrews said last week.