Sawt Falasteen - Myanmar pro-military party claims huge win in first phase of junta-run poll

The armed forces snatched power in a 2021 coup, but on Sunday opened voting in a phased month-long election they pledge will return power to the people.

"We won 82 lower house seats in townships which have finished counting, out of the total of 102," a senior official of the Union Solidarity and Development Party told AFP.

The party won all eight townships in the capital Naypyidaw, they added, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to officially disclose the results.

At the last poll in 2020 the USDP was trounced by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), which was dissolved after the coup and did not appear on Sunday's ballots.

The Nobel laureate has been in detention since the putsch, which triggered a civil war.

Campaigners, Western diplomats and the United Nations' rights chief have condemned the vote -- citing a stark crackdown on dissent and a candidate list stacked with military allies.

Official results have yet to be posted by Myanmar's Union Election Commission and two more phases are scheduled for January 11 and 25.

"My view on the election is clear: I don't trust it at all," Yangon resident Min Khant said on Monday.

"We have been living under a dictatorship," said the 28-year-old. "Even if they do hold elections, I don't think anything good will come of them because they always lie."

Many analysts describe the USDP as a civilian proxy of the military, saying former officers serve in senior leadership roles.

After voting on Sunday military chief Min Aung Hlaing -- who has ruled by diktat for the past five years -- said the armed forces could be trusted to hand back power to a civilian-led government.

"We guarantee it to be a free and fair election," he told reporters in Naypyidaw. "It's organised by the military, we can't let our name be tarnished."

The military's coup triggered a civil war as pro-democracy activists formed guerrilla units, fighting alongside ethnic minority armies which have long resisted central rule.

Sunday's election was scheduled to take place in 102 of the country's 330 townships -- the most of the three phases of voting.

But amid the war, the military has acknowledged that elections cannot happen in almost one in five lower house constituencies.

S.AbuJamous--SF-PST