Arakan News Desk: Myanmar’s ruling military leader has announced that the country will hold parliamentary elections by January next year.
However, no specific date was set for the vote, which the generals, who took power in 2021, hope will quell widespread opposition to their political control.
Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing announced the timing of the election while on a visit to Belarus on Friday.
The junta’s opponents say a vote under the military while the most popular politicians are locked up and their parties banned will be a sham.
The junta is in control of only about half the country after significant losses to pro-democracy and ethnic minority insurgents fighting to end military rule.
Allied ethnic minority insurgent groups fighting for self-determination have also rejected an election under military rule.
Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, by far the most popular political leader in Myanmar, has been jailed since the military ousted her elected government on Feb. 1, 2021.
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, which swept elections in 2015 and 2020, has been dissolved under military regulations and thousands of its members and supporters are in jail or have fled to rebel zones or into self-exile.
