On 1 April 2012, while accompanying the United Nations secretary-general’s team during the by-elections to 48 parliamentary constituencies, we were discreetly tailed by military intelligence as we moved from one polling station to another in and around Yangon. The visit took place at the request of the Government of Myanmar, which had invited members of the international community in an effort to project an image of free and fair elections. These by-elections followed sustained outreach by President Thein Sein, a former general, after which the National League for Democracy (NLD) agreed to re-enter mainstream politics, ending a boycott that had lasted more than two decades under conditions of prolonged repression.However, as formal election observation mandates rest with the United Nations intergovernmental bodies, most notably the General Assembly, this exercise was not an official observation mission. It was instead an internal fact-finding effort intended solely to report back to the Secretary-General.For most of the morning, the surveillance was subtle, almost routine, but by early afternoon it became noticeably more aggressive and overt. The same military jeep appeared repeatedly, shadowing our vehicle at close range. Eventually, our head of mission instructed the driver to pull over by the roadside. He stepped out and directly confronted the soldiers and their officer in the trailing vehicle. After a brief but tense exchange the surveillance stopped. We were not followed again that day.This episode laid bare the omnipresent reach of the military’s intelligence apparatus in a country that, for most of its post-1948 existence, has functioned as a de facto military state. Prior to 2012, the fear of military intelligence ran so deep that it bred pervasive mistrust across society; informers were widely believed to be embedded in everyday life. And yet, despite this climate of fear, an underground resistance persisted. Between 2010 and 2021, a broad assumption took hold, both domestically and internationally, that the reform process was irreversible. This belief became a standard refrain among global leaders. In hindsight, these assumptions appear naïve. The fault lines were already visible as early as 2012, signalling the inherent fragility of the transition long before its eventual collapse.As the new year begins, Myanmar enters the first phase of its elections on December 28, 2025, to be followed by two additional rounds on January 11 and 25, 2026. Yet the process has attracted remarkably little international attention, despite unfolding in a country gripped by a civil war that shows few signs of abating. These elections are taking place not in a context of political transition, but amid deepening fragmentation, widespread violence, and the near-total collapse of state authority in large parts of the country. In February 2021, Myanmar’s powerful military, the Tatmadaw, seized control from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), alleging without credible evidence that the 2020 elections were fraudulent. The coup dashed the hopes of a generation that had glimpsed the promise of democratic reform after decades of junta rule.In this sense, Myanmar, which witnessed a military coup on February 1, 2021 following the 2020 elections that restored the NLD to power, stands as a near-perfect exemplar of a decade in which liberal democracy has suffered persistent and global reversals. From Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, striking at the foundational principle of state sovereignty that underpins the modern international system, to the worldwide rise of majoritarian politics and the steady erosion of institutional checks and balances, the assumptions that shaped the post-Cold War democratic order are increasingly under strain.The military junta’s orchestrated general electionIn this respect, Myanmar’s slide from a fragile political opening into entrenched military rule is not an aberration, but a reflection of these broader global currents. The military junta’s orchestrated general election, the first in nearly five years, unfolded on Sunday )December 28, 2025) with low voter-turnout. What the generals portray as a return to “democracy” is being widely regarded both inside the country and abroad as a transparent attempt to cement military rule, even as the nation remains engulfed in civil war, humanitarian catastrophe, and widespread repression.Since then, the junta’s grip on power has been met with fierce resistance. What began as mass civil protests evolved into a nationwide armed insurgency, with People’s Defence Forces and ethnic armed organisations controlling large territories outside military reach. The conflict has left thousands killed, millions displaced, and entire regions mired in violence.In this respect, the elections for December 28 and subsequent phases in January 2026 are the first since the coup, but they are far from being a credible democratic exercise. The military government admits that voting cannot be held in all areas, particularly in regions under rebel control, and participation will be limited to parts of roughly 265 of 330 townships. In many contested or opposition-held territories, polling will not take place at all, leaving millions without a voice in the process. Even where ballots are cast, the conditions are heavily skewed: the National League for Democracy has been dissolved, its leaders (including Suu Kyi) remain imprisoned on politically motivated charges, and most genuine opposition groups have either been banned or have chosen to boycott the vote. The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), a proxy for the junta , is set to dominate virtually unchallenged.Beyond electoral cynicism, ordinary life in Myanmar has deteriorated sharply. Civilian casualties and suffering continue to mount. In Rakhine State alone, a military airstrike on Mrauk-U hospital in early December killed dozens of civilians and wounded many more which was a stark reminder that healthcare facilities and non-combatants are not spared in this war.At the same time, displacement figures remain staggering. Estimates suggest millions of people are internally displaced or have fled abroad, unable or unwilling to participate in polls they view as meaningless and dangerous. The situation in non-Bamar areas, often grouped together under the label of “ethnic minorities,” has become markedly more fluid, with each region evolving according to its own local context and conflict dynamics.Within Myanmar, sentiment toward the electoral process is mixed but overwhelmingly skeptical. Many pro-democracy activists denounce the polls as a “sham,” arguing that ballots cast under the watchful eye of military enforcement hold no legitimacy. Some factions of the resistance, including the National Unity Government (NUG) formed in opposition to the junta, have declared collaboration with the election an act of “high treason.” Public interest appears muted in many urban centers, where fear of violent retaliation and a general distrust of the process have dampened enthusiasm. Some regions under junta control may see higher turnout, but this is largely interpreted as coerced or orchestrated participation rather than genuine civic engagement.The global response has been varied but largely critical. Western powers and the United Nations have consistently rejected the claim that Myanmar’s elections meet international standards of transparency, fairness, or inclusivity. Sanctions remain firmly in place, and calls for accountability for widespread human rights violations have grown more urgent rather than receded. Against this backdrop, the relationship between Russia and Myanmar is best understood as a marriage of strategic isolation and mutual utility. Both regimes, heavily sanctioned and politically ostracised by the West, have found in each other a dependable partner to blunt international pressure and project defiance of liberal norms.Moscow has emerged as a critical supplier of arms, training, and political backing to Myanmar’s military junta, viewing Naypyidaw both as a market for its defence industry and as a diplomatic foothold in Southeast Asia at a time when Russia’s global room for manoeuvre has narrowed sharply due to the war in Ukraine. The relationship is thus less ideological than existential: a transactional alignment rooted in shared authoritarian instincts, converging grievances against the West, and a readiness to uphold one another in an increasingly fragmented and polarised international order.The irony of the moment is difficult to miss. There was a time when Myanmar’s senior generals, most notably General Min Aung Hlaing, travelled to Europe, including high-profile visits to Austria to attend major arms expositions and engage Western defence establishments. Today, those journeys lead almost exclusively to Russia, now widely seen as Europe’s principal strategic adversary. The shift captures Myanmar’s broader geopolitical reorientation: from tentative engagement with the West to a posture of defiant alignment with partners willing to overlook repression at home and the systematic hollowing out of democratic institutions.In contrast, regional actors such as China and India have adopted more calibrated and pragmatic approaches, prioritising stability and sustained engagement over outright political condemnation. Beijing, wary of instability along its border and intent on safeguarding its extensive strategic and economic interests, has cautiously endorsed elections as a possible, if deeply imperfect, mechanism for restoring internal order. New Delhi’s posture has been even more circumspect, reflecting an effort to balance its stated commitment to democratic principles with hard geopolitical realities, border security imperatives, and the strategic calculation of preventing Myanmar from drifting entirely into rival camps.ASEAN, however, has been markedly more cautious and critical than supportive. The ten-member Southeast Asian bloc has stressed that peace and inclusive political dialogue must take precedence over electoral exercises, refusing to deploy official observers and stopping short of endorsing the junta-managed polls. ASEAN’s messaging reflects deep concerns that elections conducted under continued military rule, amid widespread violence and the exclusion of major political actors, lack the credibility necessary to advance a genuine democratic transition.Some ASEAN officials have gone further, warning that re-engagement with Myanmar after the elections will remain fraught unless substantive political conditions change. Thailand’s foreign minister, for instance, has underscored that without inclusive dialogue and the release of political detainees, ASEAN’s ability to engage meaningfully with Myanmar will remain constrained even after the polls.The stakes extend far beyond a single country’s political calendarAs Myanmar goes to the polls, or what many contend is a spectacle dressed up as an electoral exercise, the stakes extend far beyond a single country’s political calendar. Optimists may argue that the outcome could still shape regional stability and open space for future peace negotiations. After all, President Thein Sein emerged from the deeply flawed 2010 elections, boycotted by the National League for Democracy, and yet his administration initiated a series of political and economic reforms that briefly raised hopes that democracy in Myanmar might take root.This time, however, the context is fundamentally different. The country is mired in a civil war-like situation across nearly half its territory, state authority is deeply contested, and the conditions that once enabled a limited political opening no longer exist.The challenges confronting Myanmar are immense and fundamentally structural. Superficial, band-aid responses by the international community were never commensurate with the depth of the crisis. Too often, external engagement was anchored in Western political assumptions, with little appreciation of Myanmar’s extraordinary social diversity or the fact that many of its societies never fully evolved cohesive social and political contracts after the end of colonial rule. This misreading bred a self-serving analysis that bordered on naïveté which was an error repeatedly exposed, from the early warning signs visible as far back as 2012 to the recurring Rohingya crises and, ultimately, the 2021 military coup.If nothing else, the 2025–26 elections in Myanmar lay bare a central paradox: the use of democratic forms, elections, ballots, campaigns, to perpetuate profoundly undemocratic power. For millions of Myanmar’s citizens, the question is no longer whether to vote, but whether their voices can ever matter again in a system where guns and prison cells still speak louder than ballots or voices in the streets. As results and reactions unfold in the weeks ahead, the world must look beyond winners and losers to the deeper currents shaping Myanmar’s uncertain trajectory, the consequences of which spill across borders. They are visible in the continued displacement of communities and the mounting pressures this places on the internal politics of countries across the region.Thirteen years ago, that brief roadside confrontation outside Yangon offered an unvarnished glimpse of the reality beneath Myanmar’s carefully choreographed democratic theatre: an intelligence state that never loosened its grip, even at the height of reformist optimism. The elections unfolding today are not a rupture from that past, but its logical culmination. What was once discreet surveillance has become overt domination; what was once the illusion of transition has hardened into a permanent structure of coercion. Equally culpable has been the international community’s persistent glossing over of Myanmar’s deeper structural realities as it treated a beleaguered Asian country with fractured social contracts, militarised institutions, and unresolved ethnic fault lines as though democratic templates could simply be transplanted onto it.The author was a member of UN Secretary-General’s Good offices on Myanmar.