Military spending tops budget
In a move that surprises no one, the junta has once again prioritized military spending in its budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, signaling that aerial campaigns targeting civilians in resistance-held territories will continue.
Junta No. 2 Soe Win, chairing a Wednesday meeting of the regime’s financial commission on the 2024-2025 supplementary budget, said he had received a directive from his boss Min Aung Hlaing that defense and security should take priority over electricity, agriculture, manufacturing, education, health, and cooking oil supply.
The junta’s defense expenditure has been on the increase since the 2021 coup, rising from 1.746 trillion kyats in 2021 to 3.703 trillion kyats in 2022 and 5.635 trillion kyats (over US$ 2.68 billion) last year. The regime has not disclosed its defense budget for 2024, nor how much will be allocated in the supplementary budget.
Min Aung Hlaing earlier signaled the need for more budget to combat armed resistance, stressing the need to prioritize spending for “national stability and rule of law” while chairing a March 21 meeting of the finance commission.
Enactment of the conscription law, reserve force law, and the formation of people’s security and counter-terrorism teams will have incurred huge expenditures for the regime. The junta is also mounting counteroffensives to recapture lost territory in northern Shan State.
The regime is desperate to regain as much territory as possible to lend its planned election next year an appearance of legitimacy, meaning more bombs and bullets for people in those areas.
Global poll propaganda stalls
The regime this week announced it was launching a website and mobile app detailing “electoral fraud and irregularities of the 2020 general election.” However, the onsite portals failed to launch as scheduled on Friday, casting further doubt on the junta’s capacity to hold a fresh election.
Junta media said the website would provide details for people at home and abroad of how the National League for Democracy government rigged the 2020 general election. The website and app would be available in Burmese, English, Chinese, Russian, and Japanese, they added.
The military seized power in 2021 and promptly threw the NLD leadership including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi behind bars, claiming fraud in the 2020 poll. That claim was dismissed by local and international monitors of the poll.
The regime has since repeatedly promised to hold fresh elections, finally conducting a census last month to compile voter lists. The launch of the website comes as it desperately seeks international recognition for a vote it plans to hold next year. Western democracies and Myanmar’s parallel civilian National Unity Government have rejected the plan as a ploy to cement military rule.
The junta said the website and app will provide detailed information, analyses, and photographic evidence of fraud and irregularities before, during, and after the 2020 election. The online portals are believed to be digitalized versions of the 2020 poll report published in Burmese by the junta-appointed Union Election Commission, which critics dismissed as distortion and lies. The same propaganda is now being made available in four more languages.
Min Aung Hlaing has repeatedly claimed that 10 million of the over 38 million votes in the 2020 election were fraudulent – a statement he drew from a report dismissed as baseless by all but the junta and its proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party.
Visiting China for the first time since the coup earlier this month, Min Aung Hlaing announced he would hold free and fair elections and invite international observers to monitor the vote. The website and app are just the latest tools deployed by the dictator to win international support for his self-serving plan.
At a cabinet meeting held after his return from China, the junta boss reiterated his claim that the 2020 poll fraud was orchestrated by the NLD executive committee, not by individual party members. The NLD, which won the 2020 election by a landslide, was dissolved by the junta last year.
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