Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: Myanmar’s dominant pro-military party has won junta-run elections, a party source told AFP on January 26, after a month-long vote that democracy watchdogs dismissed as a rebranding of army rule.
“We won a majority already,” a senior official from the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) said. Many analysts describe the USDP as a civilian proxy of the military which seized power in a 2021 coup, toppling the democratic government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
The military has said the election will return power to the people. But Suu Kyi remains detained and her massively popular party has been dissolved, while critics say the ballot was stacked with army allies.
A quarter of unelected parliamentary seats will be reserved for members of the armed forces, under the terms of a constitution drafted during a previous stint of military rule. A combined house majority of MPs will elect the President in March. Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing declined to rule out serving as the new government’s President. Parties that won 90 per cent of seats in 2020 did not appear on the ballot this time.