Fair Observer’s Video Producer Rohan Khattar Singh and Asanga Abeyagoonasekera, the Executive Director of the South Asia Project at the Millennium Project, discuss Myanmar’s elections, which have been held since December 28, 2025. They examine why the military junta is pressing ahead with a vote amid an intensifying civil war, widespread humanitarian collapse and the near-total exclusion of opposition forces. Rather than restoring stability, the election risks entrenching military rule while deepening Myanmar’s national fractures.

A country at war with itself

Abeyagoonasekera begins by outlining the reality on the ground since the February 2021 coup d’état. More than 6,000 people have been killed, over 3.5 million displaced and roughly half the population pushed into poverty. According to United Nations estimates, nearly 20 million people now require urgent humanitarian assistance due to hunger and disease linked to the conflict. This devastation forms the backdrop to an election taking place in a “completely dismantled” country. 

Militarily, the junta faces a coordinated, nationwide resistance. People’s Defense Forces operate across much of the country, local defense formations mobilize at the village level and long-established ethnic armed organizations such as the Kachin Independence Army and the Karen National Union have expanded their territorial control. The junta now holds about 15% of Myanmar’s landmass, with resistance forces controlling much of the rest. The state’s authority has collapsed across wide swathes of the country, raising questions about how a nationwide election can even be conducted.

Elections as political theater

Against this backdrop, Khattar Singh presses Abeyagoonasekera on why the military is holding elections now, at what appears to be its weakest moment since the coup. Abeyagoonasekera states that the vote functions less as a democratic exercise than as a tactical maneuver. It is a “political pause button,” he says, intended to buy time and manufacture international legitimacy after major territorial and economic losses.

The election will be conducted in phases, with voting possible in only about 200 of Myanmar’s 300 districts due to active fighting. The military has stacked the election commission with former officers, imposed severe restrictions on campaigning and jailed or silenced all meaningful opposition figures. Under these conditions, Abeyagoonasekera argues, the process is designed “not to reflect the people’s will, but to exhaust it.” Rather than signaling consent, the election reinforces the military-dominated 2008 constitution, which guarantees the armed forces veto power over reform.

Silenced leaders and excluded politics

A central theme of the discussion is the total exclusion of Myanmar’s opposition. Former civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest, alongside many other political figures. Drawing on his personal experience meeting her in Thailand in 2012, shortly after her release from detention, Abeyagoonasekera recalls her careful reflections on reconciliation among Myanmar’s deeply divided ethnic communities. He notes that reconciliation, while often invoked rhetorically, carries unique and unresolved challenges in Myanmar’s political context.

Abeyagoonasekera draws a parallel with former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, whom he also met and who is now imprisoned. In both cases, incarceration has not erased the relevance of their political insights. However, neither Suu Kyi nor any other opposition actor can participate legally, politically or even symbolically in the current election. Meanwhile, the National Unity Government, ethnic armed organizations and resistance networks exist entirely outside the electoral process and have rejected the vote as illegitimate.

Regional fallout and the limits of stability

The consequences of Myanmar’s conflict extend far beyond its borders. Over a million Rohingya refugees remain in Bangladesh, while migration, illicit arms flows, drug trafficking and scam networks affect Thailand, India and the wider region. Myanmar’s instability has become a regional security problem, compounded by competition over critical mineral resources in areas such as Kachin State, drawing in China, India and the US.

He argues that US President Donald Trump’s administration adopted a more pragmatic approach by engaging the junta rather than ignoring it, while also warning that Myanmar risks becoming a proxy of China and Russia due to its mineral wealth. Still, Khattar Singh and Abeyagoonasekera agree that an election conducted amid civil war cannot stabilize the country. As Abeyagoonasekera puts it, an imposed vote “does not heal a fractured nation — it deepens the fractures.”

Looking ahead, he outlines three prerequisites for any genuine stabilization: inclusive dialogue with resistance and ethnic groups, sustained international pressure and accountability, and credible regional mediation through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Drawing on Sri Lanka’s own 30-year civil war, he suggests that Myanmar faces similar nationalist fears of international involvement and deep constitutional fault lines tied to military dominance. While he remains cautiously hopeful that regional cooperation could eventually produce a solution, he is clear that this election will not.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/podcast are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.