Today in Myanmar, voting has started in the first phase of the general elections, the first since the military coup of 2021, reports Anadolu.

Up to 102 municipalities are participating in the first phase of voting. The second and third phases will be held on January 11 and January 25, respectively, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.

Sunday’s voting was scheduled to begin at 6:00 a.m. local time.

The Election Commission has set up 21,517 polling stations across the country.

International observers from Russia, China, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nicaragua, India and the Myanmar–Japan Association have already arrived in the country to monitor the elections.

The elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) was toppled in 2021 and the country plunged into more than four years of state of emergency. The NLD had won the November 2020 general election.

While 40 political parties, including the NLD, disbanded in 2023, at least six parties — with 4,963 candidates — are participating in the polls.

At the regional level, 57 parties are in the running. The military-backed Solidarity and Development Party has fielded some 1,018 candidates.

Speaking to reporters after casting his vote at a polling station in Nay Pyi Taw, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, chairman of the Interim Presidential Commission for National Security and Peace, said the military-organized election will be free and fair, according to local media “News”. Eleven”.

Asked if he will run for president after the vote, he said he is a civil servant and cannot comment or take any action.

However, he did not rule out a role after the election, saying that once parliament convenes, there is a constitutional process to elect the president and only after that step would it be appropriate to speak.

Myanmar has a bicameral parliament with a total 664 seats — 440 in the lower house and 224 in the upper house.

After the vote, parliament must convene within three months to elect the heads of the houses and choose the president — the head of state who chooses the prime minister to form the government.

Since the coup, the Buddhist-majority country of more than 54 million people has been wracked by internal ethnic conflicts involving armed groups and the army, leaving thousands dead and over 3.5 million displaced.

The junta has not yet announced a date for the counting of votes and election results.

Source: prizrenpost