(Reuters) -Myanmar will hold the initial phase of its general election on December 28, state television said on Monday, outlining a roadmap for the first polls in the war-torn country in nearly five years that have already been derided by critics as a sham.
The dates for the subsequent phases of the elections, which authorities plan to hold over December and January for security reasons, will be announced later, Myanmar’s Union Election Commission said, according to an announcement on MRTV.
Myanmar has been roiled by violence since a 2021 coup that unseated an elected civilian government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, and the ruling generals, led by military chief Min Aung Hlaing, have faced fierce resistance from armed groups.
A total of 55 political parties have been registered for the polls, of which nine plan to compete nationwide, according to state media.
“Six parties are under review for approval and registration,” The Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported earlier this month.
But with anti-junta opposition groups either barred from running or refusing to take part, the election has been dismissed by Western governments as a move to entrench the generals’ power and it is expected to be dominated by proxies of the military.
A newly-formed interim administration has announced it plans to hold voting in more than 300 constituencies nationwide, including areas currently held by armed groups opposed to the military, according to the state-run newspaper.
Last year, military-backed authorities held a nationwide census in an effort to create voter rolls, but were only able to conduct on-ground surveys in 145 out of Myanmar’s 330 townships.
The military justified its February 2021 coup as a necessary intervention following what it said was widespread fraud in an election three months earlier that was won decisively by Suu Kyi’s now defunct ruling party.
No evidence of the alleged fraud, which would have changed the outcome, was found by election monitors.
(Reporting by Reuters staff; Writing by Martin Petty and Devjyot Ghoshal; editing by John Mair)
