Kuala Lampur, Feb. 4 -- Myanmar's so-called election that began on December 8, 2025, is not a political event worth celebrating. It is not even one worth debating at length.

Excessive attention risks legitimising what is, at best, an exercise in managed optics and, at worst, a calculated insult to democratic intelligence.

This was not an election designed to restore legitimacy. It was designed to manufacture distraction.

Myanmar today is better understood as a basket case than as a polity in transition.

Institutions are broken, authority is contested by force, and governance has collapsed into coercion. Against this backdrop, an election is not a signal of recovery. It is political theatre staged amid national ruin.

The fundamental p...