A polling station in Yangon, Myanmar, on January 25, 2026. SAI AUNG MAIN / AFP
Myanmar's dominant pro-military party has won junta-run elections, a party source told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Monday, January 26, after a month-long vote that democracy watchdogs have dismissed as a rebranding of army rule. Official results are expected later this week.
The military snatched power in a 2021 coup, ending Myanmar's experiment with civilian rule and triggering civil war, but pledged that a three-phase vote, which finished on Sunday, would return power to the people.
With massively popular democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi detained and her party dissolved, critics say the ballot was stacked with army allies to prolong their grip on power. Voting was also not held in huge patches of the country controlled by rebel factions fighting in the civil war, another setback cited by those questioning the poll's mandate.
"We won a majority already," a senior official from the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to share preliminary results. "We are in the position to form a new government," they said. "As we won in the election, we will move forward."
