\n Myanmar's dominant pro-military party sealed its landslide victory in junta-run elections on Friday, as official results confirmed they grabbed four out of five seats in the highly restricted poll.\n<\/p>\n
\n The junta snatched control in a war-triggering coup five years ago, but promised its phased month-long polls, which ended last Sunday will return power to the people.\n<\/p>\n
\n While democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi remains in military detention and her massively popular party has been dissolved, democracy watchdogs say the ballot was stacked with the armed forces' allies.\n<\/p>\n
\n The pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) won a total of 339 of the 420 seats in the two houses of parliament up for grabs in the election -- just over 80 percent -- according to election commission results tallied by AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n Voting was cancelled in dozens of constituencies amid a civil war triggered by the 2021 military putsch.\n<\/p>\n
\n And under the terms of a constitution drafted during a previous stint of military rule, a quarter of the seats in each house are not elected but are reserved for members of the armed forces.\n<\/p>\n
\n But the overwhelming win gives the USDP a majority and the right to unilaterally pick the president when parliament convenes in March -- a role junta chief Min Aung Hlaing has not ruled out taking over.\n<\/p>\n
\n Many analysts describe the USDP -- which is staffed by many senior officers -- as a civilian proxy of the military, which has stage-managed the poll to give its rule a veneer of civilian legitimacy.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The military is seeking to entrench its rule-by-violence after forcing people to the ballot box,\" UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement on Friday.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"This couldn't be further from civilian rule.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n While the military has touted the poll as an opportunity for reconciliation, rebel factions regard it as illegitimate, and conflict monitors say it is unlikely to stymie the civil war.\n<\/p>\n
\n Elections were called off in one in five of Myanmar's townships amid the fighting, but the military waged a withering pre-poll offensive, including attacks rights groups allege may include war crimes.\n<\/p>\n
\n In junta-held territory, dissent has been purged, with new laws punishing protest or criticism of the election with up to a decade in prison.\n<\/p>\n
\n Parties that won 90 percent of seats in 2020 did not appear on the ballot this time, the Asian Network for Free Elections said.\n<\/p>\n
\n More than 22,000 people are languishing in junta jails, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners monitoring group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Myanmar's dominant pro-military party sealed its landslide victory in junta-run elections on Friday, as official results confirmed they grabbed four out of five seats in the highly restricted poll. The junta snatched control in a war-triggering coup five years ago, but promised its phased month-long polls, which ended last Sunday will return power to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-154907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n