Guest contributor
James Shwe
If you scan the global headlines this week, the verdict is unanimous. The BBC reports on a “widely criticized sham election”; The New York Times notes that while the vote is “fake,” the suffering is “all too real”; and Al Jazeera English described the military staging a performance amidst a civil war.
Yet, calling this charade a “sham” almost gives it too much credit. It implies a failed attempt at imitation, when in reality, the junta is succeeding at something else entirely: a ritual of ratification.
We lack a perfect word for this specific political obscenity—a ceremony where victims are forced to applaud their executioners. The Soviet Union industrialized this “zombie democracy” in the 1930s to simulate consent, and today, Myanmar’s generals are reviving the pantomime.
The “expert” fallacy: 2025 is not 2010
Some pundits and researchers, notably attempting to apply outdated political theories, argue that participation could be strategic. This is a dangerous delusion. To compare the political landscape of 2010 to the blood-soaked reality of 2025 is to compare, as the idiom goes, “apples and oranges”.
In 2010, we faced a “hybrid regime” seeking a transition. Today, we face a “combatant regime” that has lost control of 86 percent of the country and declared war on its own citizens. Game theory assumes “rational actors,” but there is nothing rational about a junta that dissolves the winning National League for Democracy party (NLD), imprisons its leaders, and then asks for a vote.
Participation now is not a strategy; it is surrender. It is not seeking a seat at the table; it is signing a permission slip for your own oppression.
The audience of enablers
So why hold a vote when the result is pre-written? Because the junta needs a signature on the dotted line to sign away the country’s assets.
This ritual is designed to create a “legal” entity capable of signing odious contracts with foreign backers—primarily China. Beijing, a one-party state itself, ironically funds this “democratic” process to secure its geostrategic investments, indifferent to the fact that the “government” it backs is a pariah at home.
To rubber-stamp this farce, the junta has assembled a grotesque cast of “international observers.” Credible monitors stayed away, leaving the floor to delegates from Russia and Belarus—fellow connoisseurs of the non-competitive election. These are not watchdogs; they are accomplices arriving to applaud the theater.
The firing squad applause
Ultimately, what is happening in Myanmar is not an election. It is a legitimacy-seeking ritual. The junta demands voter turnout not to measure public opinion, but to manufacture a statistic they can wave at the United Nations.
For the people of Myanmar, walking into that polling station is not an exercise of civic duty. It is akin to being forced to stand before a firing squad and commanded to clap for the efficiency of the shooters.
The only rational response to such a twisted demand is to refuse to play the part. In a game where the rules are written by murderers, the only winning move is not to play.
James Shwe is a Myanmar democracy activist in the U.S. and is a member of the advocacy groups Free Myanmar and the Los Angeles Myanmar Movement. He has been trying to organize and motivate the Myanmar diaspora to advocate for democracy in Myanmar.
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