Myanmar’s authoritarian creep

(Manny Maung – The Interpreter) Myanmar’s military is well versed in the art of obscuring language and manipulating narratives. More recently, it has moved to entrench its rule through the façade of a sham election to install a civilian government. Elections held in late December 2025 have widely been condemned as neither free nor fair, and described by the United Nations Human Rights Council as a “unilateral convening by the Myanmar military of elections that excluded much of the country’s geographical territory and many political parties”. Most governments, including Australia, have rejected the election and its results as an orchestrated manoeuvre to place the military’s leader, Min Aung Hlaing, on the path to the presidency. On 3 April, a junta-controlled parliamentary vote did just that, finally installing the former commander-in-chief in a role that he has long sought. Since the February 2021 coup that triggered country-wide protests and a civil war, human rights advocates and civil society groups have warned that the military would seek to manufacture legitimacy through superficial reforms, including tightly controlled elections. They also voiced concern that while any election would be inherently fraudulent and rejected by the people of Myanmar, the process itself would be mistaken as legitimate by other, external audiences. Their concern is beginning to play out in the language adopted to describe the regime. – Myanmar’s authoritarian creep | Lowy Institute