‘Unfair election’: young voters absent from Myanmar polls

AFP | Yangon

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The droves of young people who queued to cast ballots in past elections in Myanmar were conspicuous by their absence from Sunday’s military-run poll, with older voters dominating the turnout.

Legions have left the war-ravaged country since the military seized power five years ago, including many men of conscription age -- up to 35 -- or youngsters seeking better livelihoods away from Myanmar’s moribund economy.

And even those still in the country were not particularly eager to take part in the vote, which international rights campaigners have dismissed as a sham.

“Most of the people who go to vote are elderly,” said one man in his 20s in the Mandalay area, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons.

“I don’t think anyone wants to get involved in this chaos,” he told AFP. “People probably don’t believe in the fairness of this election.”

At a polling station near the gilded Sule Pagoda in downtown Yangon, the voters were primarily senior citizens, mothers carrying children and housewives with shopping baskets.

Out of some 1,400 people listed as registered at the site, fewer than 500 had cast their ballots with less than two hours until polls closed, according to a local electoral official.

In the last elections in 2020, turnout rate was around 70 percent.

Sein Yee, a retired rural school teacher, said that “voting is a duty for all citizens.”

“It’s an opportunity for all citizens to achieve peace in the country,” the 74-year-old woman added.

Myanmar was plunged into civil war by the military’s 2021 coup, and it instituted conscription two years ago to bolster its ranks as it battles guerrillas as well as ethnic minority armies that have long held sway in the country’s fringes.

“I think this is an unfair election that is being held against people’s wishes,” said 35-year-old Kyaw Min Thein in the western state of Rakhine, which is controlled almost entirely by an ethnic minority army.