The intensified attacks by the junta’s military forces in recent weeks has inflicted tremendous casualties and loss of life, but has not extended the junta’s control over the majority of the country. The few bases and townships recaptured the military junta from democratic and allied ethnic resistance forces represent isolated, temporary victories for the regime.
All that this has produced is more violence against the peoples of Myanmar, adding to the tragic loss of civilian lives, and provoking a greater determination of the people to overthrow the military junta.
Yet even if it fails to recapture territory from democratic and allied ethnic resistance forces, the military junta may still achieve its goals.
It works like this: the junta escalates military aggression against the people; more governments call for peace; and suddenly the sham elections look like a solution that’s “good enough” to stop the killing.
As the military junta has learned from events in other parts of the world, by escalating and killing more civilians, foreign governments will agree to “peace” deals that keep the regime in power, ignore the need for freedom and democracy, and ensure that no one in the current or new government is prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
(Of course real peace would come immediately if the military junta stopped its war on the people and surrendered its illegal hold on power.)
So as the military offensive intensifies, more governments are likely to accept the sham elections starting on 28 December 2025 as “good enough” or “better than nothing”.
If that happens then the human rights and democratic freedoms of the peoples of Myanmar – and hope – will suddenly be set aside in a “peace deal” that involves accepting sham elections.
A militocracy is a system of government that claims to be democratic and holds elections, but the majority of positions in all branches of government are held by serving or former military officers, intelligence officers and other security forces.
The military junta in Myanmar is using the local and national elections that begin on 28 December 2025 as the first stage of creating a militocracy. Out of 4,900 election candidates over 1,000 are serving military officers and the rest are either former military officers, business cronies or have passed military inspection by registering within the strict rules set by the junta.
Following the completion of these carefully engineered elections in February or March 2026, the junta will claim that Myanmar is a democratic civilian government. By then military control will be exercised through the thousands of positions in all branches of government held by serving and former military officers.
Several foreign governments will be quick to accept the election results because Myanmar’s militocracy guarantees access to strategic ports and rare earth minerals.
Even institutionally democratic governments are listening to their racist experts who say that Burma (Myanmar) can never be a democracy, and so pragmatism requires that they accept the new militocracy.
It is experts such as these in the EU business unit in Yangon and Bangkok who justified continued European investment under the military junta. They explained to us that U Zaw Zaw – a military crony identified by the UN as committing crimes against humanity – was “one of the good guys”. Imagine an EU technocrat describing a business crony of Putin as one of the good guys. This blatant double standard only happens if the basic assumption is that the lives of people in Myanmar are somehow worth less than Europeans.
Any decision by any government to accept the sham elections and the subsequent militocracy, is nothing less than a blatant declaration that the peoples of Myanmar (peoples – plural) are undeserving of the universal human rights that democratic governments and the UN system are supposed to uphold.
