By Ephraim Agbo — Analysis
On 28 December 2025, Myanmar’s military junta commenced a meticulously staggered general election—spread across three phases (December 28, January 11, January 25)—that carefully avoids the vast swathes of territory it no longer governs. This is not a democratic restoration interrupted by war; it is an election conceived within war, designed for war’s political afterlife. To describe it merely as a “sham” is analytically insufficient. What is unfolding is a refined exercise in authoritarian statecraft, where electoral form is weaponized to manage decline, reorder power, and manufacture endurance under conditions of strategic fragility.
This is not a regime acting from confidence. It is a regime governing from erosion—military overstretch, territorial loss, diplomatic stigma, and economic strangulation. The ballot, in this context, is not an aberration. It is a survival technology.
Elections as Instruments of Weak Power
Authoritarian regimes do not hold elections despite weakness; they hold them because of it. Myanmar’s generals understand that brute coercion alone cannot indefinitely stabilize a fractured polity. What they seek instead is procedural legitimacy without political risk—a controlled ritual that converts coercive dominance into institutional normalcy.
The junta’s election is therefore not about persuasion. It is about reclassification: recasting itself from a coup-born military command into a “constitutional authority” operating under a political timetable. This distinction matters not because it convinces citizens, but because it restructures how power is negotiated—internally among elites and externally with foreign states.
Authoritarian elections function less as mirrors of public will and more as interfaces: points of transaction between force and form, violence and legality.
Manufactured Legitimacy as Political Alchemy
Since the 2021 coup, the State Administration Council (SAC) has suffered from a chronic legitimacy deficit. Its authority rests on weapons, not consent. Elections offer a way to transmute coercion into ritualized acceptance—not by winning belief, but by exhausting resistance.
The junta’s calculation is subtle. It does not expect mass enthusiasm. It expects compliance fatigue. Over time, repeated procedural gestures—roadmaps, ballots, parliaments—can normalize an abnormal regime, particularly among civil servants, local administrators, and business elites whose survival depends on predictable governance rather than moral clarity.
For regional actors—ASEAN states wedded to non-interference, China prioritizing stability over democracy, India hedging against Chinese influence—this matters. An election provides diplomatic syntax: meetings can be justified, agreements signed, engagement defended. Legitimacy here is not moral; it is functional.
Institutionalizing Elite Control: Parliament as Patronage Machinery
The election’s most consequential audience is not the public—it is the elite.
Myanmar’s military is not monolithic. Years of counterinsurgency, sanctions, and battlefield losses have strained internal cohesion. Elections provide a non-violent mechanism to redistribute power: ministerial appointments, parliamentary seats, regulatory authority, and economic privileges can be allocated within a formalized structure.
The architecture matters. The 2008 constitution—preserved by the junta—guarantees the military 25% of parliamentary seats and control over key ministries. This ensures veto power regardless of electoral outcomes. Civilian institutions thus become buffers, absorbing public anger and administrative burden, while the military retains decisive authority from behind the curtain.
In this sense, the election is not democratization—it is organizational outsourcing. Governance is civilianized; power remains militarized.
Geopolitics: Elections as Sanctions Countermeasures
Internationally, the vote is a diplomatic wedge. The junta does not seek universal recognition; it seeks fracture.
Even limited engagement—from China, Russia, Thailand, or Gulf-linked investors—weakens the coherence of sanctions regimes. Elections allow partners to argue plausibly that Myanmar is “moving forward,” that engagement encourages moderation, that isolation has failed. The bar is not credibility, but deniability.
Economic logic follows. Energy corridors, mining concessions, infrastructure projects—all require contractual legitimacy. A post-election “government,” however hollow, can sign documents, guarantee deals, and shield investors. The ballot thus becomes an economic unlock mechanism, even as war continues unabated.
The Paradox of Exclusion: Mapping Power Through Absence
Perhaps the most revealing feature of this election is where it does not take place.
The exclusion of conflict zones is not an administrative failure—it is a cartographic confession. The electoral map will double as a map of military control. Where ballots exist, the state claims authority. Where they do not, the state silently concedes absence.
This produces a perverse legitimacy loop. The junta can claim a mandate precisely where resistance is weakest, while disenfranchising regions where opposition is strongest. Representation becomes contingent on submission. Citizenship is spatially conditional.
Far from national integration, the election formalizes fragmentation.
The Elimination of Politics
By dissolving the National League for Democracy, imprisoning its leaders, and sidelining credible ethnic parties, the junta has not merely tilted the playing field—it has emptied it. Politics, in any meaningful sense, has been pre-emptively nullified.
What remains is administrative choreography: military-aligned parties competing over marginal differences, devoid of ideological conflict or popular mobilization. This is intentional. Political boredom is a tactic. An uncompetitive election dulls outrage, dampens international attention, and reduces the risk of mass mobilization.
The regime is not seeking applause; it is seeking silence.
Coercion Rebranded as Participation
In voting areas, the environment is one of securitized compliance. Laws criminalizing “interference,” combined with surveillance and arbitrary detention, transform participation into a loyalty test. Voting becomes less an expression of preference than a demonstration of non-resistance.
Turnout figures, if released, will be performative statistics—measures of enforcement capacity rather than public endorsement. In such conditions, abstention is risky, participation compulsory, and choice illusory.
This is not electoral consent. It is ritualized obedience.
Strategic Arithmetic: Gains That Decay Over Time
The junta’s gamble offers diminishing returns.
Short-term utilities:
- A reusable narrative of “transition.”
- A civilian façade to manage governance failures.
- Selective economic relief via pragmatic partners.
Structural liabilities:
- The election forecloses political pathways for resistance-held regions, validating armed struggle as the only remaining avenue.
- Western sanctions are unlikely to ease; instead, dependency on Beijing and Moscow will deepen, narrowing strategic autonomy.
- A state rebuilt on exclusion will lack administrative reach, moral authority, and social trust—key ingredients for post-war reconstruction.
The result is a hollow state: institutionally elaborate, socially brittle, permanently contested.
Reading Through the Illusion
To assess the election’s real meaning, observers should ignore rhetoric and examine structure:
- Where voting occurs—and where it does not.
- Who recognizes the outcome, and who pointedly does not.
- Who is rewarded in post-election appointments and contracts.
- Whether civilian suffering changes at all once ballots are packed away.
These metrics, not speeches, will reveal the election’s true function.
Conclusion: The Theater Endures, the War Decides
Myanmar’s 2025 election is not a step toward peace; it is an attempt to govern without resolving conflict. It exemplifies how elections can be repurposed as instruments of authoritarian durability—tools to manage decline rather than reverse it.
For the junta, the ballot is a prop: a means to simulate order while real power remains kinetic, contested, and violent. For millions of citizens excluded by geography, coercion, or law, it is an act of political erasure.
The language of “stability” and “transition” will now circulate more freely. But the decisive scenes of Myanmar’s future are not unfolding at polling stations. They are being written—in blood, displacement, and resistance—far from the ballot box, on a battlefield the election cannot conceal.
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