On the fifth anniversary of Myanmar’s 2021 military coup, the ITUC-Asia Pacific has called on the international community not only to condemn the military-staged election held in late 2025 and early 2026 in Myanmar, but to unequivocally reject the announced results, warning that they are the product of a deeply flawed and undemocratic process.
State media in Myanmar has reported that the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) won an overwhelming majority of seats in the junta-run election, dominating all phases of voting and securing a supermajority in both chambers of parliament. However, the ITUC-Asia Pacific believes that the party’s victory is a foregone conclusion, asserting that the polls lacked credibility and legitimacy as the process excluded opposition voices and took place amid widespread violence and coercion.
According to ITUC-Asia Pacific, the announced results are the logical outcome of an election that excluded major opposition parties, including the banned National League for Democracy, and was held under conditions of intense repression and armed conflict. The military’s control over the Union Election Commission, security forces, and local administrators meant that there was no independent oversight, free campaigning, or meaningful competition over the electoral process.
The election was also characterised by systematic fraud and coercion through manipulated and advance voting, forced early voting in villages and conflict-affected areas, and heavy military presence in polling stations. Constituency boundaries were also redrawn to dilute ethnic and worker-dense communities and ensure outcomes favourable to the junta.
The USDP’s triumph paves the way for the junta to convene the parliament and form a new government, further entrenching military rule through a fraudulent process.
“The so-called election results are nothing more than the culmination of a sham process designed to entrench military rule,” said Shoya Yoshida, General Secretary of ITUC-Asia Pacific. “Recognition of these results would only embolden the junta and prolong the suffering of Myanmar’s people, including workers who continue to face violence, forced labour, and the destruction of their livelihoods.”
Since the coup on 1 February 2021, the military has systematically dismantled democratic institutions and launched campaigns of repression against trade unionists, civil society, and ordinary workers. Arbitrary arrests, torture, enforced disappearance, forced conscription, and mass dismissals have been widely reported. Trade union leaders, including leaders of the Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar (CTUM) and sectoral federations, remain imprisoned, targeted, or in hiding, making meaningful political participation impossible for workers and trade unions, which ITUC-Asia pacific considers as vanguards of democracy.
ITUC-Asia Pacific underscored that the results cannot be viewed independently from these abuses or the broader context of conflict and repression in which the workers and people of Myanmar have lived for years.
In addition to rejecting the announced results, ITUC-Asia Pacific has urged democratic governments, international institutions, and regional bodies to:
Reject the outcome of the Myanmar military’s sham election and the parliament that it intends to form;
“The global trade union movement stands in solidarity with Myanmar’s workers and people in their struggle for democracy, peace, and justice,” Shoya Yoshida said, calling on the international community to stand with the people of Myanmar — not with a military regime that rules through repression and violence.
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