A United Nations human rights expert has sharply criticized Myanmar’s ongoing electoral process, calling it a carefully staged façade designed to legitimize continued military rule rather than reflect the will of the people, according to APP.
In a statement issued Thursday, Tom Andrews, the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, urged the international community to reject the vote organized by the ruling military junta. He said the first round of polling, held on December 28, was marred by coercion, exclusion and violence, stripping it of any democratic credibility.
“By all measures, this is not a free, fair or legitimate election,” Andrews said, describing the process as a “theatrical performance” intended to deceive the international community while entrenching military dominance.
The vote comes nearly five years after Myanmar’s military seized power in a February 2021 coup, plunging the country into prolonged armed conflict. Since then, clashes between junta forces and ethnic armed groups have led to mass displacement, economic collapse and a deepening humanitarian crisis, compounded by devastating earthquakes in March 2025.
Although two more rounds of voting are scheduled for January 11 and 25, the junta has already announced that polling will not take place in at least 65 townships and thousands of wards and village tracts, highlighting its lack of control over large swaths of the country.
According to reports cited by Andrews, voter turnout in the first phase was low despite widespread intimidation. Young people were allegedly threatened with conscription if they failed to vote, while displaced persons, students, civil servants and prisoners faced pressure to participate under the threat of losing access to aid, education or essential documents.
The National League for Democracy, which won landslide victories in the 2015 and 2020 elections, was barred from participating after being dissolved by the military. Its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been detained since the coup, and her current condition remains unknown.
Official results show the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party winning nearly 90 percent of contested seats in the lower house of parliament—an outcome Andrews said was engineered to manufacture a veneer of legitimacy.
He called on UN member states to isolate the junta and press for the cancellation of the remaining voting phases, stressing that Myanmar’s future “belongs to its people, not to those who imprison, silence and terrorize them.”
