YANGON: Myanmar’s dominant pro-military party claimed an overwhelming victory in the first phase of the elections, a senior party official said, after democracy watchdogs warned the junta-run poll would entrench military rule.

The armed forces snatched power in a 2021 coup, but on Sunday opened voting in a phased month-long election they pledged would return power to the people.

“We won 82 lower house seats in townships which have finished counting, out of the total of 102,” a senior member of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) said.

The figure implies that the party — which many analysts describe as a civilian proxy for the military — won more than 80 percent of the lower house seats that were put to a vote on Sunday.

It won all eight townships in the capital Naypyidaw, the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to disclose the results.

At the last poll in 2020, the USDP was trounced by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), which was dissolved after the coup and did not appear on Sunday’s ballots.

The Nobel laureate has been in detention since the putsch, which triggered a civil war.

Campaigners, Western diplomats, and the United Nations’ rights chief have condemned the vote — citing a stark crackdown on dissent and a candidate list stacked with military allies.

“It makes sense that the USDP would dominate,” said Morgan Michaels, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.

“The election is not credible,” he said. “They rig it ahead of time by banning different parties, making sure that certain people don’t turn up to vote, or they do turn up to vote under threat of coercion to vote a certain way.” Official results have yet to be posted by Myanmar’s Union Election Commis­sion, and two more phases are scheduled for January 11 and 25. “My view on the election is clear: I don’t trust it at all,” Yangon resident Min Khant said on Monday.

Published in Dawn, December 30th, 2025