On Saturday, Myanmar’s junta leader, Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, announced during a visit to Belarus that the country would hold national elections by January 2026.

If the proposed timeframe holds, Myanmar’s citizens would head to the polls under a junta that has been committing numerous atrocities since the military took power in a February 2021 coup. Widespread repression, including the arbitrary detention of opposition politicians and the dissolution and criminalization of their political parties, has created a climate of fear that makes free and fair elections impossible. Military abuses are rampant in areas contested by ethnic armed groups and anti-junta forces.

Myanmar’s generals do not control enough of the country to hold credible elections. Last October, the military conducted a nationwide census, allegedly to compile voter lists, which instead appeared to be a counterinsurgency tool designed to root out opposition activists and conscript military recruits. Junta officials later announced they had managed to successfully conduct the census in only 145 out of 330 townships– less than half of the country.

Nevertheless, a few governments can be expected to support the elections. According to junta-controlled media, Min Aung Hlaing has sought China’s backing, raising the plan with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in August and again with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in November. Min Aung Hlaing has also invited election observers from Belarus, which recently held its own bogus polls that ensured a seventh consecutive term for President Aliaksandr Lukashenka.

Countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are divided on whether to support the elections. Cambodia’s former prime minister and current Senate President Hun Sen has offered to send members of the country’s National Election Committee to help prepare for Myanmar’s polls. Cambodia has a history of elections rendered meaningless by irregularities, dissolution of political parties, and physical attacks on the political opposition.

Meanwhile, Malaysian Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan recently told reporters, “We told them [Myanmar’s junta] that election is not a priority at the moment.”

United Nations human rights experts were more blunt: “We urge UN Member States to call this exercise what it is, a fraud.”

Concerned governments in Asia, including ASEAN member states, Japan, South Korea, and India, should also take this advice and firmly oppose sham elections that will only serve to legitimize military control.

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