UPDATE - Myanmar junta holds1st elections since 2021 coup

UPDATE WITH LATEST INFORMATION, CHANGE DECK, LEDE

By Saadet Gokce and Esra Tekin

ISTANBUL (AA) - Voting in the first phase of general elections in Myanmar, the first since a military coup in 2021, began early Sunday, according to media reports.

As many as 102 townships are voting in the polls' first phase. The second and third phases will be held on Jan. 11 and Jan. 25, respectively, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.

Sunday's polls were scheduled to begin at 6 am local time (2315GMT Saturday).

The Union Election Commission set up 21,517 polling stations across the country.

International observers from Russia, China, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nicaragua, India, and the Myanmar-Japan Association have already arrived in the country to monitor the election.

The elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) was ousted in 2021, and the country was plunged into more than four years of emergency rule. The NLD had won the November 2020 general elections.

While the 40 political parties were dissolved in 2023, including the NLD, at least six parties — with 4,963 candidates — are taking part in the vote.

At the regional levels, 57 parties are in the race. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party has put up some 1,018 candidates.

Speaking to reporters after casting his vote at a polling station in Nay Pyi Taw, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, chairman of the Interim Presidential Commission for National Security and Peace, said the military-run election would be free and fair, according to local media outlet News Eleven.

When asked whether he would run for the presidency after the vote, he said he is a civil servant and could not comment or take any action.

However, he did not rule out a post-election role, saying that once parliament is convened, there is a constitutional process for the election of the president, and only after that stage would it be appropriate to speak.

Myanmar has a bicameral 664-seat parliament — 440 in the lower house and 224 in the upper house.

After the vote, the parliament has to convene within three months to choose speakers and elect a president – the head of state who picks the prime minister to form the government.

Since the coup, the Buddhist-majority nation of over 54 million people has been ravaged by internal ethnic conflict involving armed groups and the military, leaving thousands dead and over 3.5 million displaced.

The junta is yet to announce a date for the vote count and election results.

*Islamuddin Sajid contributed to this story