Bloodshed, fraud loom in Myanmar election

Pundits doubt the credibility of voting under the junta-ruled country

Sentiments on the military junta’s planned elections in Myanmar not later than August are pessimistic.

“There is no way it will bring any progress,” a former civil servant in Yangon who has been on strike since the coup, told Agence France-Presse on condition of not being named for fear of reprisals.

“We will hold on to our weapons until we get our elected government,” Lin Lin, a member of one of the dozens of “People’s Defense Force” groups battling the junta, also told AFP in an interview in the jungle near the border with Thailand.

Lin Lin also vowed the elections would have no bearing on their mission to oust the military from Myanmar’s politics.

Analysts have worse expectations with their warning of more bloodshed as opposition to junta rule rages on.

They also see the exercise as just a show for the military to continue their hold on power, supporting observations that the planned poll cannot be free and fair.

After all, the army ousted in February 2021 and subsequently charged and jailed democratically-elected Aung San Suu Kyi and other politicians on the grounds that they were fraudulently voted to office in November 2020.

Any military-run elections “will fuel greater violence, prolong the conflict and make the return to democracy and stability more difficult,” United Nations special envoy Noeleen Heyzer said in a statement Tuesday, according to AFP.

“Without conditions that permit the people of Myanmar to freely exercise their political rights, the proposed polls risk exacerbating instability,” a statement from the spokesperson for UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said on Monday.

More than a million people have been displaced by violence since the coup, according to the UN, with the military accused of bombing and shelling civilians and committing war crimes as it struggles to crush resistance.