BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar’s military chief used a speech at the annual Armed Forces Day celebration Thursday to reaffirm plans to hold a general election by year’s end and call on opposition groups fighting the army to join in party politics and the electoral process.
Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing said his military government was preparing to hold the election in December and that it will be conducted according to security conditions in the country’s various regions, where there is armed conflict.
He spoke before more than 7,000 military personnel at the parade, held in the capital Naypyitaw. Rifle-bearing servicemen and women stood to attention as the general reviewed their ranks from the back of an open vehicle. They then marched past him in order, saluting him as fighter jets flew overhead, firing off flares into the night sky.
The army’s takeover from Aung San Suu Kyi ’s elected government in February 2021 has been met with widespread opposition, triggering armed resistance, plunging much of the country into conflict. The ruling military has since said an election was the primary goal but has repeatedly pushed back the date.
The plan for a general election is widely seen as an attempt to legitimize the military’s seizure of power through the ballot box and to deliver a result that ensures the generals retain control.
In his speech, Min Aung Hlaing also tried to justify the overthrow of Suu Kyi’s elected government with familiar but widely discredited accusations of it failing to investigate irregularities in the November 2020 general election, and repeating that his government would hold “a free and fair election” and hand over power afterward.
The country’s current security situation, with the military believed to control less than half the country, poses a serious challenge to holding elections.
Critics have already said the military-planned election will be neither free nor fair because there is no free media and most of the leaders of Suu Kyi’s popular but now dissolved National League for Democracy party have been arrested. Suu Kyi, 79, is serving prison sentences totaling 27 years after being convicted in a series of politically tainted prosecutions brought by the military.
The 80th anniversary of Armed Forces Day marks the day in 1945 when the army of Myanmar, then known as Burma, began its fight against occupying Japanese forces who had taken over after driving out the British.
Min Aung Hlaing, during an early March visit to Belarus, a key ally, had announced the time frame for the election. He said then that 53 political parties have already submitted their lists to participate in the election.
State media reported that he reiterated the election plans at an official meeting on Tuesday, though the reports were unclear on whether the vote would be held in the last two weeks of December, the first two weeks of January or over a period extending for those four weeks.
Separately, state-run MRTV television reported Thursday that Min Aung Hlaing granted amnesty to seven foreign prisoners, including four Thais jailed in the southern coastal town of Kawthaung who will be deported.
It is not unusual for amnesties for prisoners to be announced on state or religious holidays.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the four Thais were the fishermen arrested by Myanmar’s navy in November after patrol boats opened fire on Thai fishing vessels in waters close to their maritime border in the Andaman Sea.
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