Myanmar's Election Will Likely Not Produce Kredible Results

Voting for the 2020 Myanmar Election in Yangon. (Wikimedia Commons/Paingpeace)

JAKARTA - The European Union's Special Representative for Human Rights, Kajsa Ollongren said on Thursday it had no plans to send a monitor to elections in military-ruled Myanmar, as it would most likely not produce credible results.

Critics - including many Western countries - describe the elections that will start at the end of December as a deception attempt aimed at legitimizing Myanmar's junta rule, after overthrowing civilian democratic rule on February 1, 2021.

Ollongren said the necessary conditions for the free and fair elections in Myanmar had not been met, and the presence of monitoring would not affect the results.

"I would call it a regime-sponsored election. And if it is sponsored by the regime, the election will only produce one outcome," Ollogren said in an interview with several media outlets in Kuala Lumpur.

Myanmar has been hit by chaos since the 2021 coup, which sparked an armed uprising that has seized large parts of the country.

The military accused the results of the 2020 election won by the National League for Democracy (NLD) Party Aung San Suu Kyi of cheating.

Earlier, Myanmar's Military Junta Leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing on Wednesday said the military-backed government would not be able to hold upcoming elections across the country.

This is his first public confession that the election will not be fully inclusive, days after meeting with the Malaysian Foreign Minister and ahead of the summit of the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

"We cannot hold elections in all areas 100 percent," he said in a speech broadcast on state television from the capital Naypyitaw, adding that interlocutory elections would follow in several areas after the new government was formed.

The military junta was only able to carry out a comprehensive field census to generate a voter list in 145 of the country's 330 municipalities, according to a December census report that said Myanmar's total population reached 51.3 million.

The current rule requires political parties to meet the high threshold, which is at least 50,000 members and funds 100 million kyat (47,762.33 US dollars), so that only six parties are eligible to participate in upcoming elections across the country.

The military junta has invited ASEAN countries to send election monitors, scheduled to start on December 28 and will continue in stages until January.