Myanmar Spring Chronicle – November 2 Overview
(MoeMaKa, November 3, 2025)
The 2025–2026 Election — or the Continuation of the Coup
Most of the recent events in Myanmar are directly linked to the election planned for the end of this year. The ongoing offensives, battles, the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians, arbitrary security checks and arrests, and the detention of people accused of criticizing the election — all are consequences of this planned vote.
The military, which seized power just hours before the newly elected parliament was due to convene following the November 2020 general election, announced from the first day of the coup that it would hold a new election. Yet only nearly five years later, in 2025, is that promise now being acted upon.
The vast majority of citizens never accepted the junta’s claim that the 2020 election was rigged. They did not believe the army’s exaggerated accusations about “voter fraud” and “invalid rolls.” Over the past three decades, Myanmar has held four national elections, in which people voted enthusiastically in three of them — except for the 2010 election, which few took seriously or expected to be fair.
Still, none of those previous elections took place amid nationwide warfare, mass displacement, forced conscription, and the destruction of villages, as is the case today. Even when people lacked enthusiasm before, they never faced a situation where they had to flee for their lives, live as refugees, or watch their homes and fields burn.
This upcoming election is widely seen as one designed to restore legitimacy to the junta, rather than return power to the people. The very push to hold it while war rages across the country has made the event itself appear grotesque to most citizens.
From the start of the coup in 2021, the junta showed no genuine intention to hold a quick election. It cited the need to verify “errors in voter lists” and “investigate fraud,” but never provided a clear timeline. Members of the 2020 Union Election Commission were arrested and replaced with junta appointees, while leaders of the National League for Democracy (NLD) were detained and charged with corruption and abuse-of-power cases — effectively silencing all opposition and making the “election issue” fade into the background.
In that vacuum, many young people left the cities to join ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), including some that had signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA). They underwent military training and formed new resistance forces under the banner of the People’s Defense Force (PDF) to fight back against the coup. The National Unity Government (NUG) and the PDF emerged as the main resistance front, vowing to topple the junta militarily.
As armed resistance expanded, the junta stopped talking about elections altogether, using “the need to restore stability” as an excuse to extend its power indefinitely under martial law. From 2021 through 2023, it repeatedly extended the State of Emergency, claiming that the country had not yet “returned to normal.”
However, the Operation 1027 offensive — launched by the Brotherhood Alliance in late 2023 — shook the junta severely. Within a year of that campaign, Myanmar reached a situation comparable to the 1949 civil war, forcing the junta to consider desperate survival measures.
The idea that the Myanmar military “cannot collapse” — a long-held belief in some quarters — seems to have most influenced China, which has provided political and strategic support to the junta. Alongside that support, Beijing also encouraged the junta to proceed with elections as a means to stabilize and maintain order.
Thus, the decision to hold the 2025 election can be seen as the junta’s chosen escape route — an attempt to reassert control through political theater at a time of mounting military defeats. In the early years after the coup, the junta claimed the country was “too unstable” for an election. Ironically, the situation is far worse now than it was then — yet the generals are pushing ahead.
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, like the generals who came before him, appears to be following a familiar pattern. In post-independence Myanmar, every military government that seized power — including those after 1962 and 1988 — held onto it for nearly two decades. Even when elections were eventually held, such as in 1990, they refused to transfer power. Min Aung Hlaing seems to have envisioned a similar timeline: to hold elections at his convenience and prolong military rule under a new disguise.
Yet, due to the country’s shifting military landscape — one resembling the post-1949 civil war fragmentation — it is clear that things will not unfold according to his script.
The upcoming election will not mark the military’s withdrawal from politics — that much is certain. Whether it will even achieve what the junta hopes for, however, remains to be seen.