Myanmar ’s dominant pro-military party has won a junta-run election, according to a party source on Monday, after a month-long vote that democracy watchdogs dismissed as a rebranding of army rule.
The military snatched power in a 2021 coup, ending Myanmar’s experiment with civilian rule and triggering civil war, but pledged a three-phase vote, which finished on Sunday, would return power to the people.
With massively popular democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi detained and her party dissolved, critics say the ballot was stacked with army allies to prolong their grip on power.
Voting was not held in huge patches of the country controlled by rebel factions fighting in the civil war – another hurdle cited by those questioning the poll’s mandate.
“We won a majority already,” a senior official from the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to share preliminary results.
“We are in the position to form a new government,” they said, after the vote’s third and final phase took place on Sunday. “As we won in the election, we will move forward.”