Campaigning begins in Myanmar's junta-run election

Parties approved to participate in Myanmar's junta-organised elections started campaigning on Tuesday, two months ahead of a poll being shunned at home and abroad as a ploy to legitimise military rule.

Myanmar has been consumed by civil war since the military snatched power in a 2021 coup, deposing and jailing democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi after her party won the last election by wide margins.

The junta has lost swathes of the country to pro-democracy guerrillas and powerful ethnic-minority armed factions, but has touted elections as a path to reconciliation.

Rebels have pledged to boycott the vote in huge enclaves they control, while human rights groups and a UN expert have denounced the poll's restrictive conditions in junta-held zones.

"This election means nothing to me," said one 60-year-old man in Sittwe city, the capital of western Rakhine state. "It is not a genuine election and I see no one supporting it."

"People are struggling with their own problems," he added, speaking on condition of anonymity for security concerns in a region where fighting has triggered a humanitarian crisis.

"I see more and more beggars in town as people are starving. People have no jobs and so the election seems like a distant prospect. They have no time to be interested in it."

There will be 57 parties on the ballot when polls take place in phases beginning on December 28.

State media said on Tuesday that the second round was set for January 11, but subsequent rounds and a result date have not been announced.

Suu Kyi's vastly popular National League for Democracy -- which won 82 percent of elected seats in the last poll in 2020 -- will not run because the junta dissolved the party after jailing her and making unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud.

The gate was locked at the deserted party headquarters in Yangon on Tuesday, an AFP journalist said.

The pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) began its campaign by unveiling election billboards in the capital Naypyidaw, where voting will be held in most constituencies in the first phase of the election.

Several thousand USDP members and supporters attended a kick-off event in the city, including candidates Mya Tun Oo and Tin Aung San, both former generals and current ministers under US sanctions.

Campaigning is expected to be generally low-key with high security amid the civil war.

"It is unlikely I will go for voting and I have no idea if I am on the voter list," said one civilian displaced by fighting to the central city of Mandalay, speaking anonymously for security reasons.

"We are not very interested," he added. "We just want to go home."

In Yangon, about 300 supporters of the pro-military party, dressed in green and white, gathered at its office, an AFP journalist saw.

Red and green party flags lined the street, with around a dozen armed soldiers and police patrolling the area.

Khin Maung Soe, Yangon regional chairman of the USDP, said his party planned to campaign in townships the Union Election Commission had designated and where security could be ensured, like Yangon.

"There won't be any parading on the street," he said.

The junta has conceded elections will not take place in one in seven national parliament constituencies, many of them active war zones, while martial law remains in place in one in five townships.

The military government has introduced laws punishing those who protest against the election with up to a decade in prison, and new cybercrime laws police the internet for communications that "disrupt unity".

Diplomatic sources told AFP on Monday that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will not send election observers to Myanmar.

Numerous rights groups lobbied the 11-nation bloc to hold back monitors, lest they lend legitimacy to a vote which they say will be neither free nor fair.