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Myanmar’s junta has ended the country’s state of emergency, stepping up preparations for a December election that is being boycotted by opposition groups and criticised by international monitors.
The military declared a state of emergency in February 2021 as it deposed the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, triggering a many-sided civil war that has claimed thousands of lives.
The order gave the junta chief, Min Aung Hlaing, supreme power over the legislature, executive and judiciary – but he has recently touted elections as an off-ramp to the conflict.
Opposition groups including former lawmakers ousted in the coup have vowed to snub the poll, which a UN expert last month dismissed as “a fraud” designed to legitimise the military’s continuing rule.
“The state of emergency is abolished today in order for the country to hold elections on the path to a multiparty democracy,” the spokesperson Zaw Min Tun said in a voice message shared with reporters.
Analysts predict Min Aung Hlaing will keep a role as either president or armed forces chief after the election and consolidate power, thereby extending his tenure as de facto ruler.
“We have already passed the first chapter,” Min Aung Hlaing said in a speech in Naypyidaw reported in the state newspaper the Global New Light of Myanmar on Thursday.
“Now, we are starting the second chapter,” he told members of the junta’s administration council at what the newspaper called an “honorary ceremony” for its members. “The upcoming election will be held this December, and efforts will be made to enable all eligible voters to cast their ballots,” the newspaper reported, paraphrasing another part of his speech.
No exact date for the poll has been announced by the junta, but political parties are being registered and training sessions on electronic voting machines have taken place.
On Wednesday, the military government said it enacted a law dictating prison sentences of up to 10 years for speech or protests aiming to “destroy a part of the electoral process”.
A census held last year as preparation for the election estimated it failed to collect data from 19 million of the country’s 51 million people, provisional results said. The results cited “significant security constraints” as one reason for the shortfall – indicating how limited the reach of the election may be amid the civil war.
Analysts have predicted rebels will stage offensives around the election as a sign of their opposition.
This month the junta began offering cash rewards to those willing to lay down their arms and “return to the legal fold” in the run-up to the vote.
