The General Who Would Be President: Min Aung Hlaing

For Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the ceremony in the junta's purpose-built capital Naypyidaw was the latest move in a five-year campaign to transform a military coup into the appearance of a civilian government.

For the 54 million people in Myanmar - many of them displaced, impoverished, or living under the shadow of war - it changed very little.

His inaugural address lasted just 18 minutes and provided no roadmap for ending Myanmar's isolation or the civil war sparked by his 2021 coup. Instead, he claimed that "Myanmar has returned to the path of democracy" - a statement that drew bitter laughter from democracy advocates watching from exile.

Myanmar - formerly Burma - gained independence from Britain in 1948, and within months was engulfed in overlapping insurgencies by communist factions and ethnic minority groups seeking autonomy.

The military, known as the Tatmadaw, positioned itself as the only institution capable of holding the country together. In 1962, General Ne Win seized power in a coup and began six decades of military dominance that, with brief democratic interruptions, has never truly ended.

One of the Tatmadaw's defining features is its contempt for civilian authority. In its borderlands, the military has long operated under tactics of deliberate collective punishment against its ethnic enemies - burning villages, looting communities, and targeting civilians to drive a wedge between resistance forces and the population.

Tatamadaw checkpoint in the northern city of Mandalay/ image wikimedia

Min Aung Hlaing rose through this institution, reaching the rank of Senior General by 2013 and serving as Commander in Chief from 2011 until his presidency this month. He oversaw violent operations against the Rohingya Muslim minority in 2016 and 2017- a campaign described by the UN as having "genocidal intent." In November 2024, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor accused him of crimes against humanity and requested his arrest. The ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber has yet to make a decision on whether to actually issue the warrant.

 The Coup and Its Consequences

On February 1, 2021, one day before newly elected parliamentarians were due to be sworn in following a landslide election victory by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), Min Aung Hlaing's forces moved. Soldiers detained her along with  President Win Myint, and dozens of elected officials, citing unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the November 2020 elections — which the NLD had won with 83 percent of parliamentary seats.

The public response was immediate. Hundreds of thousands came onto the streets, with hundreds killed over the next three months. The resistance then evolved into something the military had not faced before: an urban, ethnically Burman armed insurgency -the People's Defence Forces (PDF) - fighting alongside longstanding ethnic armed organisations across the country.

The human cost has been immense, with deaths estimated as over 95,000 people, and with millions more displaced.

The Sham Election and the Civilian Costume

The inauguration this month was the culmination of the political theatre Min Aung Hlaing has been staging since 2021: the military removes its unform and dresses its dictatorship in civilian clothes.

In the poll that took place at the end of last year, the army-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) won 89 out of 102 seats - roughly 87 percent. Serving military officers continue to occupy an additional quarter of all parliamentary seats by constitutional design, without ever facing voters. Large swaths of the country under resistance control did not vote at all.

Western governments and democracy monitors were unequivocal. The election was a sham. International observers estimated the military controlled less than half of Myanmar's total land area, with its authority largely limited to major cities and transport routes.

Former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is now 80, remains under detention, serving a 27-year sentence on charges widely regarded as politically fabricated.

Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing on inauguration day / Image Wikimedia

Notably, the inauguration ceremony was attended by representatives from China, India, and Thailand, as well as 20 other countries - a signal that regional powers, whatever their private reservations, are prepared to work with Myanmar's new civilian-uniformed government.

The War With No End

Conflict in Myanmar has continued for decades, but the civil war has recently entered a new and more dangerous phase. New alliances are taking shape on both sides, and the outcome may determine whether Myanmar finally finds a path toward democratic federalism, or slides further into authoritarian darkness.

In mid-December 2025, the emergence of the Spring Revolution Alliance (SRA) marked a new attempt at coordinated resistance, pulling together nineteen groups - remnants of the NLD's political network, PDF units, and ethnic armed organisations.

To date the opposition has been involved in fragmented guerrilla warfare which has had a limited impact on a military that retains control of the major cities, the air force, and the country's key economic levers.

What Comes Next

Myanmar's near-term future remains unclear, amid what’s being seen as a military stalemate in which no resistance group is strong enough to defeat the Tatmadaw.

The junta retains core urban centres and Naypyidaw, but looks likely to lose more provincial territory as Myanmar fragments further.  

The possibility that the new SRA forces can now coordinate to take control of a major city remains a possibility, but many analysts believe the conflict will only be halted with intervention from neighbouring China, as the broker of a ceasefire.  

What is certain is that the fundamental nature of Myanmar's crisis has not been improved. A military that has spent decades perfecting the cruel art of internal repression has simply donned civilian clothes. For the millions of Burmese people caught between war and economic collapse, the inauguration ceremony in Naypyidaw was very much business as usual.

Asia Media Centre