Mizzima Editorial
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the Myanmar military coup that threw the Golden Land into turmoil. As Senior General Min Aung Hlaing seeks to cloak military rule in civilian garb, following the three-phase “sham” election, the country stands at a crossroads.
Five years ago today, the Myanmar military arrested and bundled off the country’s top two elected leaders, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint, into captivity, eventually framing them under trumped up charges that are likely to see them die in prison.
The Myanmar’s military’s tentative foray into democracy was turned upside down, the will of the people thrown into the toilet, a move that sparked widespread protest that degenerated into civil war and the formation of the Spring Revolution.
Myanmar had been given a taste of democratic freedom, from 2010 onwards, and post-coup there is no appetite – particularly amongst Generation Z – to accept military rule. After over six decades of rule by the generals, the majority of the population has had enough.
This battle for the soul of Myanmar is not a struggle for regime change – it is a struggle for system change, the aim being to put a reformed military firmly under civilian control – not the “sham” election and government-installing process that has taken place over the last month.
As panelists representing the Myanmar opposition on a recent online live broadcast made clear, the military junta-organized election that has crowned the military-proxy Union of Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) as the winner is totally rejected by the opposition. They point out that the voter turnout was low – much lower than the 54% claimed by the junta – and that the people’s favourite party, the National League for Democracy and its leaders, were not allowed or willing to stand.
Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing is banking on obtaining a light veil of legitimacy that will allow the military to maintain control as puppet-master of the USDP – a party mostly made up of former generals who have exchanged their green uniforms for white attire. China, Russia and Belarus may accept the deceit but many in the international community, including the UN and ASEAN, have rejected this fake election.
That said, Min Aung Hlaing will try by hook or by crook to divide the Spring Revolution resistance and opposition.
Five years have past and analysts are questioning whether 2026 could be make-or-break for the Spring Revolution. Many of the leaders and fighters recognize this and are working to set up a more unified front to combat the Myanmar military.
Writer James Shwe, in an article in Asia Times, stresses the importance of resistance unity. He says fragmentation is the resistance’s greatest strategic vulnerability. It allows the international community to hedge its bets, treating the junta as the de facto state because the opposition appears to be a chaotic array of armies.
Shwe says that in order to fix this, the resistance must move beyond loose coordination to a hybrid federal structure: a system in which the National Unity Government (NUG) and ethnic authorities agree on a shared federal executive for foreign affairs and defense, while respecting the autonomy of local administrations in education, health and policing.
“We do not need a centralized ‘super-government’ – that fearsome model has failed Myanmar for 70 years,” he writes. “We need a functional federal democratic union where coordination is institutionalized, not ad hoc.”
Five years after the military coup, it is clear that Myanmar’s Spring Revolution forces need to double down and pull together to once and for all remove the scourge of the brutal military dictatorship.
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