Southeast Asian foreign ministers told Myanmar’s junta to prioritize a ceasefire in its civil war over fresh elections during a meeting in Malaysia on Sunday.
The Myanmar military seized power in February 2021, making unsubstantiated claims of massive electoral fraud in 2020 polls won resoundingly by the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy.
The junta then unleashed a bloody crackdown on dissent, and as fighting ravaged swaths of the country, it has repeatedly delayed plans for polls that critics say would be neither free nor fair.
“One thing that we know they want to have an election. But we told them that election is not a priority at the moment,” Malaysian Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan told reporters after the ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting on the Malaysian island of Langkawi.
“The priority now is (for a) ceasefire and everybody to stand down. It’s very simple,” Mohamad said.
Malaysia is this year’s rotating chair of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which critics have long derided as a toothless talking shop.
On Sunday, Aung Kyaw Moe, the junta’s foreign affairs secretary, represented Myanmar.
Mohamad said Aung Kyaw Moe briefed the ministers about the junta’s plans to hold an election without giving any dates.
ASEAN has led diplomatic efforts to end the conflict but has struggled to implement a five-point peace plan agreed by all bloc leaders, including Myanmar’s junta, in April 2021.
Cox’s Bazar Life Desk/AFP
