SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Myanmar completed its third and final round of voting on Sunday in a monthlong general election called by the ruling military junta - an election critics call a sham. The military seized power after it deposed the elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021. She remains in prison. The country remains in chaos after five years of civil war. Michael Sullivan reports.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in non-English language).
MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: The music was festive at this polling station in the commercial capital, Yangon, on Sunday as voters drifted in to cast their ballots. But the result was already clear - a thumping victory for the military's proxy party, despite their dismal showing in the last election, when it managed just 6% of the vote. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, which won that one handily, was barred from running this time around in an election that wasn't even held in contested areas.
RICHARD HORSEY: The results of the Myanmar elections were not surprising. They were a foregone conclusion, really, where the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party won a landslide victory.
SULLIVAN: Richard Horsey is senior Myanmar adviser for the International Crisis Group. He says the goal of this election was to fix errors the military believes were committed in the past by allowing Aung San Suu Kyi and her party to participate in the political process in the first place and, quote, "mess things up" for the army.
HORSEY: It's not about international legitimacy. It's certainly not about domestic legitimacy. It's about returning to their favored constitutional setup and, you know, ensuring that their power is, in their mind, secure more sustainably into the future than it is with a military regime.
SULLIVAN: A Parliament with a majority controlled by their proxy party and one where 25% of the seats are reserved for the military itself. Much of the international community has rejected the elections from the get-go. On Sunday, junta leader General Min Aung Hlaing dismissed their concerns.
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MIN AUNG HLAING: (Speaking Burmese).
SULLIVAN: "The Myanmar people are voting, not outsiders," he said. "Therefore, we don't really care if the international community recognizes the election."
Amara Thiha, a Myanmar scholar at the Stimson Center in D.C. who's in Myanmar for the elections, thinks Myanmar's neighbors don't care all that much either.
AMARA THIHA: India and China already signal acceptance, and the countries around Myanmar are mostly focused on where the system can function, not about the election was clean or not. Border trade, stability - these are the - matter more than the process itself.
SULLIVAN: And what of Myanmar's roughly 55 million people, millions of whom have been left displaced, destitute and hungry since the coup and the civil war that followed? That war and their suffering will continue, just like that of Myanmar's long-persecuted Muslim minority Rohingya.
TUN KHIN: Not only Rohingya, now all the people of Burma are facing crimes committed by this Burmese military.
SULLIVAN: Tun Khin is a London-based Rohingya activist who's been attending this month's genocide hearings at the International Court of Justice, brought by Gambia against Myanmar on the Rohingyas' behalf. He's hopeful the court will rule in favor of the Rohingya. He's less hopeful the international community will do anything about it, or about the fate of the rest of Myanmar's people following this election.
For NPR News, I'm Michael Sullivan in Chiang Rai, Thailand.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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