BANGKOK, MAR 8 (AFP/APP):Myanmar’s junta chief said the country would hold an election in December or January, the first in the war-torn nation since the military staged a coup in 2021.

“We are planning to hold the election in December 2025 or … by January 2026,” General Min Aung Hlaing was quoted as saying in the state-run newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar published Saturday.

The vote would be “free and fair” he said on Friday during a state visit to Belarus, adding that 53 political parties had “submitted their lists” to participate.

“We also invite observation teams from Belarus to come and observe” the election, he said during a meeting with Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko in Minsk.

The Myanmar military seized power in 2021, making unsubstantiated claims of massive electoral fraud in 2020 polls won resoundingly by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).

It has since unleashed a bloody crackdown on dissent and as fighting ravages swathes of the country had repeatedly delayed plans for fresh polls that critics say will be neither free nor fair.

The junta is struggling to crush widespread opposition to its rule from ethnic rebel groups and pro-democracy “People’s Defence Forces”.