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Overshadowed by civil war and doubts about the credibility of the polls, voters in Myanmar were casting their ballots in a general election starting on Sunday, the first since a military coup toppled the last civilian government in 2021.
The junta that has since ruled Myanmar says the vote is a chance for a fresh start politically and economically for the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.
But the election has been derided by critics - including the United Nations, some Western countries and human rights groups - as an exercise that is not free, fair or credible, with anti-junta political parties not competing.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, deposed by the military months after her National League for Democracy won the last general election by a landslide in 2020, remains in detention, and the political party she led to power has been dissolved.
Parliament will pick president, junta chief says
Soon after polls opened at 6 a.m. (2330 GMT), voters began trickling into some polling booths in the country's largest cities of Yangon and Mandalay, according to a witness and local media.
Dressed in civilian clothes, junta chief Min Aung Hlaing voted in the heavily guarded capital city of Naypyitaw, then held up an ink-soaked little finger, smiling widely, photographs published by the pro-military Popular News Journal showed.
Voters must dip a finger into indelible ink after casting a ballot to ensure they don't vote more than once.
Asked by reporters if he would like to become the country's president, an office that analysts say he has ambitions for, the general said he wasn't the leader of any political party.
"When the parliament convenes, there is a process for electing the president," he said.
Military-backed party seen as frontrunner
Mass protests followed the ouster of Suu Kyi's party, only to be violently suppressed by the military. Many protesters then took up arms against the junta in what became a nationwide rebellion.
In this election, the military-aligned Union Solidarity and Development Party, led by retired generals and fielding one-fifth of all candidates against severely diminished competition, is set to return to power, said Lalita Hanwong, a lecturer and Myanmar expert at Thailand's Kasetsart University.
"The junta's election is designed to prolong the military's power of slavery over people," she said. "And USDP and other allied parties with the military will join forces to form the next government."
Following the initial phase on Sunday, two rounds of voting will be held on January 11 and January 25, covering 265 of Myanmar's 330 townships, although the junta does not have complete control of all those areas as it fights in the war that has consumed the country since the coup.
Dates for counting votes and announcing election results have not been declared.
With fighting still raging in parts of the country, the elections are being held in an environment of violence and repression, UN human rights chief Volker Turk said last week.
There has been none of the energy and excitement of previous election campaigns, residents of Myanmar's largest cities said, although they did not report any coercion by the military administration to push people to vote.
In the lacklustre canvassing, the USDP was the most visible. Founded in 2010, the year it won an election boycotted by the opposition, the party ran the country in concert with its military backers until 2015, when it was swept away by Suu Kyi's NLD.
Election will lead to 'better future', junta says
The junta maintains that the elections provide a pathway out of the conflict, pointing to previous military-backed polls, including one in 2010 that brought in a quasi-civilian government that pushed through a series of political and economic reforms.
For the first time, polling in Myanmar is being conducted via more than 50,000 electronic voting machines that will speed up counting and eliminate the possibility of fraud, according to the junta-controlled election commission.
Election observers from Russia, China, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nicaragua and India have flown into the country ahead of the polls, state-run media reported on Sunday.
The junta's attempt to establish a stable administration in the midst of an expansive conflict is fraught with risk, and significant international recognition is unlikely for any military-controlled government - even if it has a civilian veneer.
Zaw Min Tun, a junta spokesman, acknowledged that there would be critics among the international community that do not support the ongoing elections.
"However, from this election, there will be political stability," he told reporters after voting in Naypyitaw. "We believe there will be a better future."
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