16 March 2026: The Myanmar military junta’s power grab entered its next phase today, as its generals and proxies convened their illegitimate “parliament” in Naypyitaw. It is the first such gathering since the junta’s fraudulent elections concluded in January.

Over the next two weeks, dozens of senior junta generals are expected to swap their military uniforms for civilian clothes as part of a staged rebrand. This charade is expected to conclude in early April with the formation of a new junta puppet “government” operating under the direction of junta leader and accused war criminal Min Aung Hlaing.

“Min Aung Hlaing has killed tens of thousands of civilians, set the country ablaze and destabilised the region, all in a selfish bid to anoint himself president,” said Yanghee Lee, Member of the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M). “A confected title and a costume change won’t fool the Myanmar people or the international community or erase his crimes. He will ultimately be brought to heel and to justice.”

In December, the junta pressed ahead with its fraudulent elections in an amateurish bid to extract legitimacy from the international community. ASEAN confirmed it would not endorse the process and was joined by a large number of states.

The junta was unable to conduct its poll in most of the country. According to mapping estimates by the Democratic Voice of Burma, the process covered just 42 percent of Myanmar’s territory. With the country’s most popular and successful political parties barred from participating and democratically elected leaders held in incommunicado political imprisonment, the ballot was comprised almost entirely of junta nominees and proxies. Voter turnout, unsurprisingly, was abysmally low.

Throughout the process, the junta intensified its campaign of mass atrocities against civilians, targeting perceived opponents. Scores of civilians have also been killed in junta airstrikes, artillery fire and massacres in the weeks since its electoral sham concluded.

“The junta’s expectation that its sham elections could lead, by stealth, to the formation of a legitimate parliament readily accepted by the international community is delusional,” said Marzuki Darusman, Member of SAC-M.

“ASEAN’s ‘people centred’ principle would be irreparably damaged were it to go along with the junta’s charade.

This would further seriously erode ASEAN’s centrality, eventually rendering it totally irrelevant as a durable and essential regional entity,” Darusman added.

By appointing a coterie of former and current senior junta generals to key positions, Min Aung Hlaing seeks to entrench his total control over a junta “government” as well as the military.

But these manoeuvres will bring him no closer to what he desperately needs – legitimacy and normalisation. The junta is reviled by the population and trapped within a crisis of its own making.

“If Min Aung Hlaing thinks a rebrand will offer him a way out, he is sorely mistaken,” said Chris Sidoti, Member of SAC-M.  “States must outright reject the junta’s puppet government and refuse to engage with it.”

The people-led Spring Revolution has fundamentally altered Myanmar’s political and social landscape. An overlapping patchwork of emerging democratic institutions and governance structures is building Myanmar’s future from the bottom up. The Spring Revolution, while still in its infancy, represents the only legitimate and viable path towards a stable and inclusive federal democratic Union.

SAC-M urges States and the broader international community including the UN to back these genuine nation-building efforts by increasing financial, material and capacity building support to the people’s legitimate representatives: ethnic organisations and councils, the National Unity Government, emerging state and federal units and alliances, and civil society.

As the UN Human Rights Council convenes in Geneva to consider the human rights situation in Myanmar, urgent action is needed to protect civilians from relentless junta airstrikes. States must cut off the junta’s access to munitions, cash and jet fuel by strengthening embargoes and financial restrictions, including sanctions against senior officials and military-owned and crony companies and their subsidiaries.

At the same time, States must double down in their efforts to hold Min Aung Hlaing and his gang to account for their crimes and finally put an end to the decades-long impunity that the Myanmar military continues to take for granted.