Power in Myanmar has long been measured in bullets, not ballots. Yet this winter, the same generals who once dismissed democracy as a threat to order are preparing for elections, hoping to claim a veneer of legitimacy through the ritual of the vote. The coming polls, set to stretch from December into February, are being held in a country half-consumed by war. The Tatmadaw controls roughly half of Myanmar’s territory; ethnic armies dominate much of the rest.

Entire regions in Rakhine, Kachin, Chin, and northern Shan are effectively autonomous zones under the rebel command. What remains outside the majority Barman community-dominated lowlands in the south are contested grey areas where neither side holds sway for long and the reach of the state ends where its convoys stop.

Even the Junta’s own administrators concede that elections in many districts will be impossible. This will not be Myanmar’s first performance of electoral theatre. Since independence, its political story has swung between brief democratic openings and long military eclipses.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) won by a landslide in 1990, only to see the results annulled. It triumphed again in 2015 and 2020—until the army tore up the results, jailed its leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and resumed direct rule. The 2025 elections promise no deviation from this grim pattern. A quarter of the parliamentary seats remains constitutionally reserved for uniformed officers, and the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party faces no credible challenger. The outcome, like the past, is preordained.

A Fractured Nation: Myanmar today is less a unified state than an archipelago of armed sovereignties. In Rakhine, the Arakan Army controls major towns and trade routes but struggles to maintain governance amid........

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