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As people trickled into polling stations scattered across Myanmar to vote in the country’s first elections since the 2021 military coup, much of the nation remained consumed by war.
On a TV screen at polling stations, a smiling woman sang and danced: “Hey dear friends, so that a colorful future may bloom, let us choose those who will shape tomorrow.”
The military junta has billed the vote, which was held in three stages concluding this Sunday, as a return to democracy. International observers, however, have widely dismissed the election as illegitimate, held amid ongoing conflict and mass displacement. The junta-backed party has already claimed a lead in the first two rounds held in late December and early January.
Hundreds of people were killed in military crackdowns on protests and tens of thousands more arrested in the months after the coup five years ago that overthrew the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Thousands of people fled to the countryside, where they coalesced into anti-junta resistance groups or joined ethnic armed groups.
By May 2021, Myanmar was plunged into a civil war that has since killed 90,000 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. According to the U.N., more than three million people have been displaced from their homes, with some fleeing mandatory conscription imposed by the junta in February 2024. The junta has bombed towns, weaponized internet shutdowns, and restricted much-needed humanitarian aid to civilians in areas controlled by resistance forces, even as it has lost control over large areas of the country to resistance groups.
Observers have warned that the elections could legitimize the junta’s rule both at home and abroad, especially at a time when it is seeking to secure backing from China. But for many Burmese people, already living in the throes of war, the outcome of the election is unlikely to change much.
“This so-called ‘election’ is an attempt to prolong…
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