Myanmar’s People’s Pioneer Party (PPP), led by former junta minister Thet Thet Khine, failed to win a single seat in the first phase of the military-organised election held on December 28, party officials said.
The vote on Sunday was the first round of a planned three-phase election widely criticised as an attempt by the military to entrench its rule nearly five years after seizing power in a 2021 coup. Polling took place in 102 of Myanmar’s 330 townships.
Large parts of the country will be excluded from all phases of the vote due to ongoing conflict and resistance against military rule.
One of the few parties to compete throughout the country, the PPP lost all the races for seats in the lower parliamentary chamber and state legislature in which it fielded candidates, the party’s vice-chair Saw Han Aye confirmed to Myanmar Now on Tuesday.
Results for the upper chamber and ethnic affairs minister posts will be determined by a final vote tally after all three phases are complete and remain inconclusive for now, he added.
“We didn’t win any seats in the lower house or regional assemblies,” Saw Han Aye said.
He noted that the party was leading in the preliminary counts for two ethnic affairs minister positions in Magway and Bago regions but stressed that the results for those elections were not yet confirmed.
A PPP candidate was initially declared the winner in a race in Yangon Region’s Hmawbi Township, but election officials later announced he had not won the seat, citing errors in vote tallies. Party officials also reported delays and irregularities in the advance voting counts in several townships.
Advance voting, a process open to certain voters including members of the military and Myanmar nationals living abroad, is susceptible to irregularities such as influence or coercion that violate the principle of secret balloting.
The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), the military proxy party, is rumoured to have benefitted from intimidation and pressure on civil servants, military personnel, and employees of large military-connected companies during advance voting in Myanmar’s 2010 elections.
In the current polls, USDP officials have claimed overwhelming victories in constituencies where results have been tallied so far. The party appears to have dominated even in Rakhine State, a culturally and historically distinct part of the country where locally well-known candidates stood for other parties.
Only three townships in Rakhine State—Sittwe, Kyaukphyu, and Manaung—held votes during the first phase. The state’s remaining 14 townships are still under the control of the Arakan Army (AA), a powerful ethnic armed group fighting an ongoing war against the military for control of the state.
Aye Maung, chair of the Arakan Front Party (AFP), said the USDP was leading overall in the state, although detailed results had yet to be released. He confirmed he had lost his bid for an upper house seat in Sittwe to a USDP candidate, and that the USDP had won both lower and upper house seats in Kyaukphyu Township.
The AFP secured victories in Manaung Township, but Aye Maung said advance voting appeared to have influenced results, drawing comparisons to the USDP’s landslide win in the 2010 election.
The USDP has claimed early victories in several regions, although the junta-appointed election commission has yet to release comprehensive official results. Major political parties including the disbanded National League for Democracy were barred from participation, and detractors have said the process falls well short of the standard for a free, fair election.
Myanmar’s Union Election Commission has barred PPP party chair Thet Thet Khine from standing in parliamentary elections herself, citing rules related to unresolved financial liabilities. Although she has served in ministerial posts following the 2021 military coup, she is still excluded from standing as a candidate.
The second and third phases of the election are scheduled for January 11 and January 25, respectively.
