The state of emergency will be lifted in August 2023, said junta chief Min Aung Hlaing in a televised address on Sunday. Elections would also take place at this point.
“I promise that multi-party elections are guaranteed to take place,” said Hlaing. After the coup, the junta had promised to hold elections after a year-long state of emergency.
The military seized power in Myanmar in early February. The de facto head of government at the time, Aung San Suu Kyi, was ousted and has since been charged with a series of criminal charges. The 75-year-old is under house arrest.
The junta had justified the coup with alleged electoral fraud in the parliamentary elections last year, which ended with a landslide victory for Suu Kyi’s NLD party. Last week the junta announced the cancellation of the election results. Observers from the Asian network for free elections had described the dealings as “by and large representative of the will of the people”.
After the coup, there had been mass protests in Myanmar for weeks, against which the armed forces cracked down on. According to activists, more than 900 people were killed.
There were also smaller demonstrations on Sunday. In the city of Kale in the north of the country, protesters held up banners that read “Strength for the Revolution”. In the economic metropolis of Yangon, opponents of the junta organized a protest march with flares.
