Myanmar Military Junta Holds Census Next Month For 2025 Elections

General Min Aung Hlaing. (Wikimedia Commons/Vadim Savitsky)

JAKARTA - Myanmar's military government will hold a national census of residents and households in October, state media said on Monday, regarding plans to hold elections by the previous 2025, amid raging conflict across the country's territory.

The census data collected between October 1-15 will be used to hold general elections next year, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said at a meeting on Sunday.

"Sensus can be used in the preparation of a correct and accurate voter list which is the basic need to hold a free and fair multiparty general election of democracy," Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said separately in a televised address on Sunday.

The proposed election has been ridiculed a lot as a scam and the results cannot be recognized by western countries, with dozens of parties disbanded for not registering to participate, including the dominant National League for Democracy (NLD), whose government was ousted by the junta.

The country of 55 million people has been hit by chaos since February 2021, when the military toppled the popular government of Nobel laureates and NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, citing fraud in elections that were won by a landslide two months earlier.

Many NLD politicians, including Suu Kyi, were arrested. Meanwhile, those who fled said the junta's allegations of voter list fraud were baseless and fabricated to justify the coup.

The coup sparked widespread protests responded to by a brutal crackdown that turned the demonstration into an armed resistance movement.

Since then, the coup has joined many well-established ethnic minority soldiers to be the most significant challenge to the military in decades.

The military government in July said 27 parties that had signed up for elections had denounced the uprising.

The junta has no effective control over Myanmar, after losing full authority over cities covering 86 percent of the country's territory hosting 67 percent of the population, the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar said in a May report.

Earlier this year, thousands of young people also fled overseas after the junta called for military service to increase its growing number of troops.

Last month, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi promised technology assistance for the census process for a "complete general election" in a meeting with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, according to junta media.

Meanwhile, the parallel Government of National Unity (NUG), which consists of former lawmakers and opponents of other juntas, said international communities and neighboring countries should denounce the general election and census process.

"The junta has the intention of holding fake general elections and by using census reasons, they collect information from the people they will use to terrorize them," said his spokesman Kyaw Zaw.