Military pledged to hold elections in 2025 after repeated delays caused by extensions of emergency rule.
Myanmar’s military government has extended the country’s state of emergency by six months as it struggles to maintain its grip on power.
All members of the military-controlled National Defence and Security Council “unanimously decided” to extend the state of emergency on Wednesday owing to “terrorist acts” by government opponents, said state broadcaster MRTV.
Army chief and Acting President Min Aung Hlaing had proposed the extension to “prepare valid and accurate ballots” for elections scheduled for 2025, said the broadcaster, adding that the delay was needed to “carry out the population census”.
Last week, all responsibilities of Myanmar’s figurehead president were handed over to Min Aung Hlaing after Myint Swe, the acting president at the time, was placed on medical leave due to a prolonged illness.
Min Aung Hlaing has repeatedly promised to hold a multiparty election, saying in June that polls will be conducted in 2025.
Critics say the proposed polls will be neither free nor fair.
Multiple extensions
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military seized power in February 2021, making unsubstantiated allegations of fraud in the 2020 elections which Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won in a landslide victory.
The military put the country under emergency rule for a year when it took power, extending the measure multiple times as it battled established ethnic minority armed groups and newer pro-democracy People’s Defence Forces.
Under the military-drafted 2008 constitution, which is still in force, authorities are required to hold elections within six months of a state of emergency being lifted.
But, in recent months, the military government has suffered a string of battlefield defeats to an alliance of ethnic minority armed groups in the north and west of the country.
Last week, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) claimed it had seized the northern town of Lashio, which sits on a vital trade highway to China and is home to the military’s northeastern command.
The government denied the claim.
The loss of Lashio would be a huge blow to the military government, which has lost territory to the MNDAA and other armed groups in recent weeks.
In January, the MNDAA captured the city of Laukkai near Myanmar’s border with China after about 2,000 soldiers surrendered in one of the military’s biggest defeats in decades.
Since the 2021 takeover, fighting between the military and its opponents has forced 2.7 million people to flee their homes, according to the United Nations.
More than 5,400 people have been killed and 27,000 arrested in the military’s crackdown on dissent, according to a local monitoring group.
Last year the election commission announced that Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD would be dissolved for failing to reregister under a tough new military-drafted electoral law.
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