As the pro-military USDP holds guarded rallies, a starving and fearful public meets the vote with bitter apathy, while ASEAN refuses to send observers to the "sham" poll.
CaliToday (28/10/2025): Myanmar's military junta officially launched the campaign period Tuesday for a national election that is being comprehensively shunned by its own people, by armed resistance groups, and by the international community as a hollow ploy to manufacture legitimacy for its iron-fisted rule.
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| A billboard shows Myanmar's chairman of the army-backed ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, Khin Yi, ahead of the start of the election campaign in Yangon (STR) |
The campaign kicks off just two months before a phased poll, set to begin on December 28. It is the first such vote since the military shattered the nation's democratic experiment in a 2021 coup, deposing and jailing Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
Since that coup, Myanmar has been consumed by a brutal civil war. The junta, which seized power alleging unsubstantiated voter fraud, has lost swathes of territory to a resilient coalition of pro-democracy guerrillas and powerful ethnic armed factions.
Despite this, the military has touted the election as a "path to reconciliation."
It is a path few are willing to walk. Rebel groups have already pledged to boycott the vote in the huge enclaves they control. Meanwhile, the United Nations and human rights groups have denounced the poll's "restrictive conditions," which include a new law punishing anyone who protests the election with up to a decade in prison.
'It Means Nothing to Me'
For the average citizen, the election is a cruel abstraction, completely disconnected from the daily struggle for survival.
"This election means nothing to me," said a 60-year-old man in Sittwe, the capital of western Rakhine state, who spoke on condition of anonymity for his safety. "It is not a genuine election and I see no one supporting it."
His focus, like that of millions, is elsewhere. "People are struggling with their own problems," he added. "I see more and more beggars in town as people are starving. People have no jobs... They have no time to be interested in it."
That sentiment was echoed by a civilian displaced by fighting to the central city of Mandalay. "It is unlikely I will go for voting and I have no idea if I am on the voter list," he said, also speaking anonymously. "We are not very interested. We just want to go home."
A Campaign of Absences and Armed Guards
The start of the campaign period has thrown the election's façade into sharp relief.
At the deserted headquarters of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) in Yangon, the gate was locked tight on Tuesday morning. The NLD, which won the 2020 election in a landslide—securing 82 percent of elected seats will not be on the ballot. The junta officially dissolved the party after jailing its leadership.
In stark contrast, the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) began its campaign. In the capital, Naypyidaw a junta stronghold where most constituencies will vote in the first phase—the party unveiled new election billboards. Several thousand USDP members attended a kick-off event, which featured retired generals and, notably, current ministers Mya Tun Oo and Tin Aung San, both of whom are under US sanctions.
In Yangon, a more modest gathering of about 300 USDP supporters dressed in party green and white assembled at their office. But the scene underscored the election's true nature: the street was lined with party flags, while a dozen armed soldiers and police patrolled the area.
Even the USDP's own chairman in Yangon, Khin Maung Soe, admitted the campaign would be muted. "We will start campaigning another day," he said, adding decisively, "there won't be any parading on the street."
A Predetermined Outcome
With 57 parties approved to run many of them small and obscure the poll is widely seen as a tool to install a USDP-led government.
The junta itself has conceded that the election will be incomplete, admitting it cannot take place in one in seven national parliament constituencies, most of which are active war zones. Martial law also remains in place in one-fifth of all townships.
The final, decisive blow to the poll's credibility came on Monday. Diplomatic sources confirmed that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will not send any election observers. The 11-nation bloc, which has been repeatedly snubbed by the junta, has effectively sided with rights groups who warned that sending monitors would only "lend legitimacy to a vote which will be neither free nor fair."