Myanmar’s 2024 census was almost certainly the most contentious – and deadly – ever conducted.
Enumerators and their heavily armed guards from Myanmar’s military were subject to repeated attacks from opposition groups, as they stumbled through a failed attempt to document the country’s population between October and December last year.
One incident in early October saw seven soldiers providing security for census takers in Mandalay Region killed with an explosive device. Days later, three more soldiers were killed when opposition forces hit their vehicle with a shoulder-launched rocket in Kayin State in the country’s east.
“The census was an utter, abject failure,” Richard Horsey, Myanmar adviser to the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera.
“But the regime has declared it a marvellous success.”
What is generally a mundane administrative exercise in population counting in most parts of the world, that Myanmar’s census was met with such violent resistance speaks to its significance in the country’s democratic trajectory.
Publishing preliminary results in January, Myanmar’s Ministry of Immigration and Population said the census represents the military government’s “commitment to national reconciliation”.
But it also represents the final step before the military attempts to hold a national election later this year – the first since overthrowing Myanmar’s democratically elected government in a coup four years ago and igniting a civil war.
While the military has painted a potential vote as a return to democratic norms, for Myanmar’s opposition forces, elections are merely an attempt to legitimise the illegitimate regime that seized power in February 2021.
The “election will be a sham, it will just be for show”, said Zaw Kyaw, a spokesperson for the presidential office at the National Unity Government (NUG), an exiled administration that includes lawmakers ousted by the military.
“The military believes that [holding an election] will be an exit strategy, and they can get some legitimacy in the eyes of some countries by hosting a sham election,” he told Al Jazeera.
“But this election will not lead to stability. It will lead to more instability and more violence.”
‘Absolutely no credible data’
In November 2020, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi led her National League for Democracy (NLD) party to a landslide victory in Myanmar’s general election, winning 82 percent of seats contested in the country’s national and regional parliaments.
Three months later, in the early hours of February 1, the military would overthrow Aung San Suu Kyi’s government, arresting her and other NLD figures. Justifying the coup, the military alleged massive NLD voter fraud in the polls and declared the results void, without providing any evidence of wrongdoing. The coup triggered nationwide pro-democracy protests, morphing into an armed rebellion that continues to engulf large swaths of the country today.
The military-installed government – led by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing as its prime minister, and more recently president – has ruled the country since 2021 under a state of emergency that it has renewed several times as it battles ethnic armed groups and newer pro-democracy fighters across the country.
On Friday, the military extended the state of emergency a further six months to July 31.
“There are still more tasks to be done to hold the general election successfully,” the military said, announcing the extension of emergency rule.
“Especially for a free and fair election, stability and peace is still needed,” it said.
Myanmar’s military said its goal for the 2024 census was to provide an “accurate” voter list for the next election.
Such a list would prevent the double-counting of ballots and the participation of ineligible voters, stamping out the widespread voter fraud it claims corrupted the vote in 2020.
“The junta produced absolutely no credible data,” said Khin Ohmar, founder of democracy and human rights group Progressive Voice.
“The junta’s sham census lacked coverage of major swaths of territory and large segments of the population, particularly in areas controlled by democratic resistance groups or revolutionary forces,” she told Al Jazeera.
By its own account, Myanmar’s Ministry of Immigration and Population said it only fully counted populations in 145 out of Myanmar’s 330 townships, which appears to indicate the military now controls less than half the country.
Despite the limited census data, the ministry said it was “profoundly grateful to the people of Myanmar for their enthusiastic participation”, describing the census as a “resounding success”.
Khin Ohmar said the reality is that members of the public who participated in the census were forced “into providing personal data”, often “at gunpoint”.
“It is clear that the junta will continue to use these violent tactics against civilians for its sham election,” she said.
“Any public participation is guaranteed to have been coerced by the military junta,” she added.
Myanmar’s military government did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Al Jazeera.
A crisis of an ‘unprecedented scale’
Just how high stakes elections are for Myanmar’s severely weakened military cannot be overstated.
While proclamations of its imminent demise have been frequent since the coup, the once unlikely goal of a regime-free Myanmar now looks more achievable than ever as the military has suffered serious setbacks since late 2023.
In October that year the Three Brotherhood Alliance – a coalition of ethnic armed groups: the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army – carried out a devastating assault on military-controlled territory in northern Shan State.
Setbacks for the regime continued into 2024 with the military experiencing its worst territorial and personnel losses in its history. Some 91 towns and 167 military battalions fell to resistance forces in a crisis of an “unprecedented scale”, according to the United States Institute of Peace.
Plummeting morale has also seen a “historic surge in defections” from the army.
In the context of diminishing control and increasingly robust violent resistance, critics say holding a national election is a fanciful notion.
The regime’s Election Commission Chairman Ko Ko said in December the polls would be held in just under half of the country’s 330 townships nationwide. But even this figure appears unduly optimistic.
Myanmar’s pro-democracy resistance groups and anti-military government ethnic armed organisations increasingly see the military as there for the taking.
While the ousted NLD administration, in government between 2015 and 2021, attempted to strike a balance between civilian and military rule during the country’s short-lived democratic experiment, a return to the pre-coup status quo of military officials in government is no longer an option.
“Our main goal [in 2025] is to eliminate the military dictatorship,” the NUG’s Zaw Kyaw said.
“The military is weaker than it has ever been in Myanmar’s history,” he added.
Despite the inherent security risks, Horsey of the Crisis Group believes national polls look “increasingly likely” this year.
Time is also ticking for Min Aung Hlaing, Horsey says, as grumbling grows louder from within the military establishment.
“There is pressure from within the elite to hold these polls. They don’t want Min Aung Hlaing ensconced as dictator-for-life. Most don’t relish the prospect of him sticking around forever,” Horsey said.
“He’s consolidated all power in his own hands and they want a slice of the action,” he said.
The military’s most influential patron, China, “has also been pushing very hard”, Horsey added.
“[China] has no interest in electoral democracy, but they do not like [Min Aung Hlaing] and think elections will be a way of diluting his power. Perhaps even bringing more reasonable, predictable and amendable people to the fore,” he said.
One group not pushing for elections in Myanmar is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The 10-member bloc, of which Myanmar is a member, has been bitterly divided on the issue. But ASEAN foreign ministers issued a joint statement in January telling the regime that holding an election amid an escalating civil war should not be a “priority”.
‘Violent, messy’ and ‘bizarre exercise’
Under Myanmar’s military-drafted 2008 constitution, authorities are mandated to hold elections within six months of the state of emergency being lifted – currently set for July 31 – with November the traditional month to do so.
But for the vast majority of Myanmar’s embattled population, what month the military will hold the sham polls is irrelevant.
Holding “elections are an absolute anathema to most people” in Myanmar, the Crisis Group’s Horsey said.
“It is seen as – and is – an attempt [by the military] to wipe away the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi’s landslide victory five years ago,” he said.
“That is something that people just will not accept and they will resist.”
Such resistance was already evident in the attacks disrupting the census, and Horsey believes the elections will similarly be a “violent, messy, incomplete process”.
“Who in their right mind would campaign, open party offices, and participate in the election? There’s going to be ambushes, attacks, assassinations – it’s going to be very very dangerous,” he said.
“It’s going to be a bizarre exercise, something that no one else, I think, would recognise as an election.”
While Horsey said there was a “consensus” among most resistance groups that civilians involved in the census should not be attacked, he believes the stakes are higher for the elections and polling stations will “absolutely be seen as a legitimate target”.
The NUG’s Zaw Kyaw said while there will “definitely” be attacks on military targets by the People’s Defence Force (PDF), there will be “no attacks on civilians” participating in the vote.
But even if violence targeting civilians is limited, punitive action of various forms will almost certainly be taken against those deemed to be collaborating with the military regime.
During the census, nine enumerators, mostly female teachers, were arrested and held for more than a month by PDF fighters in Myanmar’s southern Tanintharyi Region.
Bo Sea, a Tanintharyi PDF spokesman, told Al Jazeera that while the group recognises some civilians are forced into participating in election preparations, those deemed willing collaborators will face “even more severe” punishment than census participants.
“We consider these people as collaborating with the junta’s election process as accomplices,” he said. “There will be civilian teachers and election officials involved. Their participation means they are aligning themselves with the junta,” he added.
Bo Sea is not alone.
Ko Aung Kyaw Hein, a spokesman for the PDF in Sagaing Region in Myanmar’s northwest, said those who “support the terrorist military council [in carrying out the elections] will be prosecuted under counterterrorism laws”.
Bo Than Mani, chief of the Yinmarbin PDF, also in Sagaing Region, told Al Jazeera his unit will “disrupt” the election, but denied it would conduct violent attacks against those participating.
What is clear, at least to those in Myanmar’s resistance, is that regardless of how the national elections play out, it represents a desperate act by a desperate, sinking military regime.
“Their morale is at the lowest,” Zaw Kyaw said.
“I cannot predict when the collapse will happen. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen in months. It could happen in a year,” he said.
“But definitely the military will fall. No one can stop the military from falling down.”
Additional reporting by Hein Thar.
