The Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M), an independent group of international human rights experts, urged the international community to reject the regime’s 2025–26 elections on Monday, claiming that it lacks any legitimacy as voting continues into January 2026 amid a civil war and humanitarian crisis exacerbated by the March 28 earthquake.
“The idea that junta leader Min Aung Hlaing is a nascent democrat is beyond absurd,” said Ben Lee, the SAC-M executive director. “His name has become a byword for atrocities—airstrikes, torture, sexual violence, even genocide. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court wants him arrested for alleged crimes against humanity.”
Regime media reported that eight countries sent election observers to monitor the polls for the first phase of voting on Dec. 28.
Vietnam and Cambodia were the only members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to dispatch observers to Myanmar. Russia, China, Belarus, India, Kazakhstan, and Nicaragua also sent officials to observe the polls.
The regime elections are to be held in three phases, with the first phase completed on Dec. 28 and the upcoming two phases set to take place on Jan. 11 and Jan. 25, 2026.
Protests against the regime elections were held in several countries on Dec. 28, including in the Australian and Japanese capitals Canberra and Tokyo, as well as in South Korea’s Ulsan, Gwangju, and Daegu, where protesters rallied against the regime in Myanmar outside of its embassies.
The U.N., the E.U., the U.S., the U.K, and Australia, called the regime elections a “sham,” citing the exclusion of pro-democracy parties, including the National League for Democracy (NLD), which was ousted from government in the military coup on Feb. 1, 2021.
NLD State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint were both detained during the 2021 coup and have been held in prison ever since. Both are now serving lengthy prison sentences.
The NLD was dissolved by the regime’s Union Election Commission (UEC) for not re-registering after the 2021 coup. Many senior NLD figures have been held in detention or were forced to flee underground or into exile to avoid arrest and prosecution.
A total of 102 townships are included in the first phase of elections on Dec. 28, with 100 more to follow on Jan. 11, 2026, and 63 others on Jan. 25, according to the UEC. It scheduled elections in 265 out of Myanmar’s 330 townships.
