On 28 December 2025 and 11 January 2026, Myanmar held the first two out of three scheduled rounds of the resumed nationwide parliamentary elections procedure. The country had not seen the elections conducted for more than five years.
On the Background to the Resumption of Parliamentary Elections in Myanmar
It is correct to speak specifically of a “resumption” of the principal mechanism of people’s will in the functioning of any state because the results of the previous parliamentary elections held in November 2020 were annulled just two months later by Myanmar’s armed forces leadership, headed by General Min Aung Hlaing. Once again (by no means for the first time during the country’s relatively short period of independence), the military concluded that the “civilian” authorities were failing to cope with the challenges the country was facing.
The senior military leadership was correct at least in assessing these challenges as extremely complex and hazardous for the very existence of the state. They were largely outlined in the commentary for the New Eastern Outlook in connection with the military coup that took place on 1 February 2021. The army leadership that came to power at that time spoke of the “temporary nature” of its assumption of governing functions, meaning that it did not deny the need for the country to be governed by professionally elected civilian authorities. In particular, there were statements about “preparations” for snap parliamentary elections, which were supposed to take place “within a year.”
However, the “electoral pause” stretched into five years, during which the internal political situation not only failed to get stabilised but became even more acute. In the autumn of 2023, the “Three Brotherhood Alliance” made its presence felt, adding a coordinated character to previously fragmented armed attacks by seemingly incompatible movements opposing military rule.
Under these conditions, the “temporary” military leadership nevertheless decided to resume the electoral process. It also announced an amnesty for more than six thousand individuals who had been held in detention for various reasons. Though being formally linked to another event, it happened immediately after the first round of the third parliamentary elections in the history of the country. The lists of those released were not made public, and most likely they do not include Aung San Suu Kyi, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison. She is the leader of the National League for Democracy, which gained 83% of the vote in the previous parliamentary elections held in November 2020.
In Myanmar’s political landscape, the now eighty-year-old Suu Kyi remains a symbolic figure. In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, almost entirely discredited today. Even at the time, the reasoning behind the award clearly reflected the specific motivations of the political pharisaism that currently dominates Western countries. In pursuit of its own interests, it exploits genuine problems of the modern world, such as human rights violations, climate change, the spread of drug addiction, poverty, and the resulting mass migration. At the same time, resistance to this parasitic political trend is growing within Western societies themselves.
It should also be noted that direct or indirect military rule is observed not only in Myanmar but in a number of other countries now collectively referred to as the “Global South.” Most of them spent long periods under colonial rule, during which colonial powers divided spheres of influence, neglecting the difficult compatibility of the cultural and religious characteristics of different population groups that wound up within unified, artificially drawn borders.
The Foreign Policy Background of Developments in Myanmar
As for the foreign policy context of the events at issue, it is directly manifested, for example, in the realms of Myanmar’s relations with neighbouring Bangladesh. This pertains to the so-called “Rohingya problem,” that is to say, the difficulties in relations between Myanmar’s central government and the Muslim minority, residing until recently in the Rakhine State along the border with Bangladesh. These “difficulties” resulted in the mass migration of the Rohingya into the territory of their religiously close neighbour (partly into Malaysia as well)—a rather poor country, to put it mildly, which nevertheless provided the newcomers with at least some form of refuge. At the same time, their current state in Bangladesh cannot but be affected by the serious internal turmoil that has recently arisen within Bangladesh per se.
Taking advantage of internal political chaos, international online fraud syndicates have settled down in Myanmar border areas adjacent to Thailand. They have also been observed in some other Southeast Asian countries, such as Cambodia. Combating these groups serves as one of the pretexts for the presence of leading global players in Southeast Asia, for that of China above all.
In the realms of its “Act East” foreign policy strategy, India is also making its presence felt in the region, preferring to act through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which embraces eleven countries of the subregion, including Myanmar. Japan’s presence in Southeast Asia is also becoming increasingly visible, particularly by means of its transport and infrastructure projects implemented jointly with India.
As far the leading global power, the US, is concerned, its policy in the region is also pursued mainly through ASEAN. Washington has made use of the Association’s institutional apparatus, for instance, in a bid to “settle” the situation in Myanmar. Nevertheless, there is no reliable data to support suspicions regarding the deliberate supply of US weapons to the anti-government insurgents of the aforementioned “Brotherhood of Three.”
It goes without saying that the most dominant influence on events in Myanmar in recent years has been exerted by China. Moreover, this influence extends not only to the country’s central government but apparently also to the main insurgent movements. Only this circumstance can explain the fact that the overall chaos and armed clashes have had virtually no impact on the functioning of facilities already built as part of the critically important China–Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), one of several branches of the global Belt and Road Initiative. Two other branches of the BRI with similar purposes in this region are being implemented in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
The CMEC project was accelerated owing to the visit of Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Myanmar in January 2020, during which he held talks both with Myanmar’s civilian leadership, including Aung San Suu Kyi, and with General Min Aung Hlaing. Apparently, China sees no obstacles to the CMEC being successfully completed at the final point of this infrastructure and transport corridor, namely the port of Kyaukphyu, located on the coast of the Bay of Bengal in the Rakhine State. This explains China’s active participation in resolving the aforementioned “Rohingya problem.”
Finally, it should be reiterated that the phenomenon of the military elite retaining real power in Myanmar since the 1960s is, to a significant extent, objective in nature, including in the form of “operating from behind the scenes” of civilian governments that have emerged from time to time. In this regard, it is difficult to disagree with the opinion of the former Japanese ambassador to Myanmar that even after the current restoration of the electoral process, the military leadership will continue to govern the country de facto.
Vladimir Terekhov, expert on Asia-Pacific issues
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