Myanmar’s pro-military party has claimed a landslide victory in the first phase of the junta-run election – alleging that it won 82 out of a total 102 seats.
“We won 82 Lower House seats in townships which have finished counting, out of the total of 102,” said a senior official of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), reported AFP.
Official results are yet to be posted by Myanmar’s Union Election Commission – with two more phases of elections due on 11 January and 25 January.
Myanmar polls
The first of three phases of polling finished in Myanmar on Sunday, 28 December – in an election that was reportedly widely dismissed as a ‘sham’.
Myanmar polls come nearly five years after the military forces snatched power in a 2021 coup – prompting widespread opposition and spiralling into civil war.
The party won all eight townships in the capital Naypyitaw, the USDP official said, as per AFP.
What happened in 2020?
The military had overturned the results of the 2020 elections after Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy scored a sweeping victory over the USDP. Both the armed forces and the USDP claimed the vote had been marred by widespread fraud — allegations that international observers later said were unfounded.
On Saturday, however, chief Min Aung Hlaing, who has ruled the country by decree for the past five years, insisted the armed forces could be trusted to return power to a civilian-led government.
“We guarantee it to be a free and fair election,” he told reporters after casting his vote in Naypyitaw, reported AFP. “It’s organised by the military, we can’t let our name be tarnished.”
The 28 December election was scheduled to take place in 102 of the country’s 330 townships – the largest of the three rounds of voting.
Polls held amid air strikes, explosions
Violence was reported in several parts of the country as the first round of voting took place on Sunday, with explosions and air strikes disrupting multiple regions. In the Mandalay region, a rocket struck an uninhabited house in the early hours of the morning, injuring three people, the region’s chief minister told the BBC.
In a separate incident, a series of explosions late on Saturday damaged more than 10 houses in Myawaddy township near the Thai border. A local resident told the BBC that a child was killed and three others were taken to hospital following the blasts.
