Myanmar’s military regime nominally transferred power to an interim administration ahead of a planned election, with regime leader Min Aung Hlaing remaining in charge in his other role as acting president.
An announcement in regime media said a decree that granted power to the military after its 2021 coup had been cancelled and a caretaker administration had been formed alongside a special commission to oversee the election due to begin in December.
The move signals no change to the status quo in Myanmar, with Min Aung Hlaing holding on to all major levers of power as acting president while retaining his position as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
A nationwide state of emergency in place since the coup on Feb. 1, 2021, which was due to expire on July 31 after seven extensions, has now been lifted, said regime spokesperson Zaw Min Tun.
“The interim president and commander in chief said this upcoming six months are the time to prepare and host the election,” he told regime media.
Myanmar has been in chaos since the 2021 coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government and plunged the nation into civil war, with the military fighting to contain a rebellion and accused of widespread atrocities, which it denies.
The election has been dismissed by Western governments as a sham to entrench the generals’ power and is expected to be dominated by proxies of the military, with opposition groups either barred from running or refusing to take part.
David Mathieson, an independent Myanmar-focused analyst, said the change in power was cosmetic and those in charge would continue to be abusive and repressive.
“They are just rearranging the same pieces and calling the regime a new name,” said Mathieson. “This is part of preparations for an election which we don’t know much about.”
War raging
The extent of the civil war’s impact on the planned election remains unclear. In an effort to create voter rolls, a nationwide census was held last year but was only able to be conducted in 145 out of Myanmar’s 330 townships – reflecting its lack of control over swathes of the country.
At a meeting of defence officials on Thursday, Min Aung Hlaing said voting in the election would be held in different areas in December and January due to security concerns, regime media reported.
Martial law and a state of emergency would be imposed in more than 60 townships across nine regions and states due to the threat of violence and insurgency, the report said, many in border areas where the military is facing resistance groups.
China’s foreign ministry on Thursday said that it “supports Myanmar’s development path in line with its national conditions and Myanmar’s steady advancement of its domestic political agenda.”
The military has killed more than 6,000 people and arbitrarily detained over 20,000 since the 2021 coup, with more than 3.5 million people internally displaced, an Amnesty International report said in January.
Myanmar’s military has dismissed allegations of abuses as Western disinformation.
It justified its 2021 coup as a necessary intervention following what it said was widespread fraud in the 2020 general elections – held three months earlier that was won decisively by Suu Kyi’s NLD.
Election monitors found no evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome.
REUTERS
