Myanmar’s State Administration Council (SAC) military regime is gearing up for elections, slated to held by the end of 2025. As part of the preparations, the junta conducted a three-day “Peace Forum” in Naypyidaw, even as the city recovers from the devastating Mandalay earthquake in late March.
In attendance were the top military leadership, diplomats, regime officials, political party leaders, signatories to the now moribund 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) and a range of dignitaries and emissaries from China, India, Thailand, Russia and other states.
The forum’s theme was “to examine how peacebuilding and credible elections can promote national development and state stability, ultimately laying the groundwork for united Myanmar (sic), fostering continuous, inclusive dialogue and strategic partnerships, engaging all stakeholders to identify concrete, people-centered pathways forward.”
For anyone with even a passing knowledge of contemporary Myanmar, this is parallel reality delusion. The country has been in a downward spiral of war, economic decline and instability since the coup of 2021.
There is no scope for peacebuilding, credible elections are a contradiction in terms, there is no unity and the only effective strategic partners are the many ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) and their People’s Defense Force (PDF) allies working to topple the Myanmar military.
Coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing’s speech, which largely conformed to most of his messaging in the first half of this year, claimed that new elections and a peace process were prerequisites for future stability and development.
He said, “to ensure broader representation of diverse groups, such as various parties and ethnic groups, I have stated that in the upcoming election at the end of this year, in addition to the currently used first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, a proportional representation (PR) system will also be applied in a mixed format.”
The SAC also plans to conduct elections in phases around the country, almost certainly due to the poor security conditions in well over half the nations. There will likely be no elections in Rakhine state, northern Shan state and most of eastern Myanmar as anti-SAC armed groups hold sway there. And, of course, the coup-toppled National League for Democracy (NLD) will be barred from participating.
After his speech and obligatory photo-op with attendees, Min Aung Hlaing then jumped on a plane to Belarus and Russia for his third trip there this year. The SAC-run state media provided far more coverage of the senior general’s travels than his Peace Forum, including his visit to the Belmedpreparaty pharmaceutical factory in Minsk and an economic forum in St Petersburg.
Chinese attendance at the Peace Forum was no surprise, with the Special Envoy for Asian Affairs, Deng Xijun, who has visited Myanmar a number of times, and three academics, Xiong Shunqing, Kong Peng from Yunnan University and Jia Yu from Peking University in the lineup.
Beijing, of course, doesn’t believe in peace or elections; it just wants some semblance of stability and a pathway to reform. Some Myanmar opposition figures contend that China views the elections as a way to sideline Min Aung Hlaing, who they sense Beijing neither favors nor trusts, and wants to find future leaders more amenable to reality.
China has also had to contend with the aftermath of Operation 1027, which saw multiple armed groups capture large amounts of territory along the Myanmar-China border in northern Myanmar, and the Arakan Army (AA) surrounding its pipeline and other infrastructure projects in Rakhine state.
Min Aung Hlaing may also have added a slight, veiled rebuke to China in his speech. “The negotiation of peace needs to be free of foreign interference and internal instigation and harassment…(r)egarding international relations, while it is necessary to be in solidarity with countries around the world, special care must be taken not to become dominated or influenced by others.”
While non-interference is a routine feature of the regime’s authoritarian leaders’ oeuvre, he could have been referencing China’s role in brokering the return of the city of Lashio from the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), which the insurgent group captured in mid-2024, as well as China’s relations with other armed groups in the north.
Thailand’s attendees included Sihasak Phuangketkeow, former deputy foreign minister, and Nothapol Booningam, former chief of staff of the Royal Thai Army.
China and Thailand have been the two neighboring states most directly affected by the 2021 coup and the armed revolution against the Myanmar military.
Their attendance should thus not indicate unconditional endorsement of the SAC’s election agenda but rather a careful diplomatic balancing act to find pathways forward for their respective security and economic interests.
But the neighbor to watch the most is India, which has been a horribly bad-faith actor in post-coup Myanmar. Indian attendees included a senior diplomat, Jaideep Mazumdar, and several Indian journalists.
At the same time as the Peace Forum, pictures obtained by The Irrawaddy showed several Myanmar peace brokers attending a recent event at the Indian Embassy in Yangon, including representatives of the Swiss-based Center for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Center) mediation outfit.
India will likely be one of the key international supporters of the elections. It is also likely Myanmar is using Indian inspired, and possibly supplied, electronic voting machines for the projected polls.
Joining the Peace Forum by Zoom was the far-right Russian philosopher Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin, a purportedly close advisor to Vladimir Putin and proponent of a school of thought called “Eurasianism.”
Dugin is also the author of a recent book about Donald Trump called “The Trump Revolution-A New Order of Great Powers.” The SAC is thus listening to some particularly unhinged views as it stumbles towards elections and continues its ingratiation with Putin’s Russia.
Also in attendance was a European called “Professor” Lorenzo Maria Pacini, who claims to be an associate professor at “SUPDI-Distance Private University in Zud” in Switzerland. It is not clear this is a genuine university.
One of his online bio’s claims he has a doctorate from “UniToscana – Leonardo Da Vinci University in Zurich in Political Philosophy” on Aleksandr Dugin’s “political metaphysics.”
He is further described as “a Tuscan from a noble family, (who) has always been a thought rebel…(j)ournalist, publisher, musician, Taekwondo and Archery athlete, he also does professional consulting, analysis and holistic therapies.”
A real Renaissance man, but it’s not apparent what expertise he has on peace and elections in Myanmar. How did someone like this get to a Peace Forum in Naypyidaw, and who paid for him? Some of the guest speakers from Thailand, China and India have sound connections and credentials, but the SAC is obviously scraping the bottom of the barrel to find Westerners to attend their “peace” events.
The regime also trotted out its pathetic hired henchmen, Hla Maung Shwe, Zaw Oo and Aung Naing Oo, whose collective credibility was shredded years ago during the 2012-2015 peace process under former President Thein Sein. Chairman of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), Khin Yi, which is the SAC’s designated party to contest the elections, is also a prominent SAC figure to watch.
Other notable actors in the charade include former prominent political dissident Ko Ko Gyi, chair of the People’s Party, which has registered to contest the elections, and a number of other political parties from over 50 that plan to run in the polls.
Leaders of armed groups who signed the 2015 NCA always attend these events, like wooden props, with a total lack of legitimacy and no support from their ethnic communities, which have been dramatically transformed by four years of war.
The Peace Forum was thus yet another military charade, a venue for insincere performances of peace talk to entertain the Myanmar military leadership as they wage a savage war against their own people.
Most of the Western embassies were invited weeks prior, but chose to stay away. The SAC pulls off these squalid stunts with regularity, and only the most gormless of opportunists see any merit in them.
Back in March, the “Myanmar Narrative Think Tank” was launched in a lavish ceremony in Naypyidaw, also with many Russian and Asian guests. It, like the Peace Forum, was an entirely vacuous exercise to give some ersatz credibility to planned polls.
But the SAC’s elections will have no credibility, inside or outside the country, no matter how many gabfests it stages while waging war against a majority of the country’s population and barring the party that overwhelmingly won the last two polls.
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian and human rights issues on Myanmar
