The declaration is widely anticipated to be the last before the military holds long-delayed national polls this year.
Myanmar’s military has extended its state of emergency for another six months as it struggles to maintain its increasingly fragile grip on power, with fighting raging on multiple fronts across the country.
The military-controlled National Defence and Security Council renewed the emergency rule in a meeting in the capital Naypyidaw on Friday, a day before the four-year anniversary of a coup that plunged the country into chaos after a decade of tentative democracy.
“All members of National Defence and Security Council including the commander in chief as well as acting president decided in unison for the extension of the state of emergency for another six months according to the section 425 of the 2008 constitution,” the statement said.
“There are still more tasks to be done to hold the general election successfully. Especially for a free and fair election, stability and peace is still needed,” state-run MRTV said on its Telegram channel in announcing the extension of emergency rule.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since February 1, 2021, when the military seized power from the democratically elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government and arrested its hugely popular leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
Justifying the coup, the military claimed, without evidence, that the NLD had committed widespread voter fraud in the 2020 elections that it won by a landslide three months earlier.
The military imposed a yearlong state of emergency after seizing power, extending it for six-month intervals multiple times as it brutally crushed peaceful pro-democracy protests and battled ethnic armed groups and anti-military fighters that emerged in response to the coup.
The military’s Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing – who is also serving as the country’s self-appointed prime minister and president – had promised to hold elections by August 2023. But he has repeatedly delayed doing so due to the increasingly intense armed rebellion unfolding across the country.
Myanmar’s military has suffered a string of damaging defeats in the north and west of the country since late 2023, in what the United States Institute of Peace has described as a crisis of an “unprecedented scale” for the military – which has dominated the country’s politics since the 1960s.
Despite this turmoil, growing internal and external pressure means the military is widely expected to hold the long-delayed national elections in late 2025.
Opposition groups have pledged to violently disrupt the polls, which they condemn as an attempt to legitimise the military regime which seized power four years ago.
Under the military-drafted 2008 constitution, authorities are required to hold elections within six months of a state of emergency being lifted, which is slated for July 31.
Richard Horsey, Myanmar adviser to the Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that most indications point to elections finally being held later this year, with November traditionally being the month in which polls take place in Myanmar.
“The National Defence and Security Council meeting is scheduled for July 31, or there could be an ad hoc meeting called before then, to potentially declare an end to the state of emergency,” Horsey told Al Jazeera. “Then they have six months to organise the polls.”
Horsey added that the end of the state of emergency and the subsequent elections imply a “return to rule by the 2008 military-drafted constitution”, a move that would be welcomed by members of Myanmar’s military and its main backer, China.
“A return to the 2008 constitution is seen as hopefully leading to a little bit more predictability and less random decisions [by Ming Aung Hlaing],” he said.
