Burma’s previous Fake Elections: History not repeating itself but it rhymes?
This seminar is an online event via Zoom
Date: February 23, 2026 (Monday)
Time: 06:00 – 07:00 PM (Melbourne Time)
01:30-02:30 PM (Myanmar/Yangon Time)
Join Zoom Meeting: please click here
Meeting ID: 852 4207 1512
Passcode: 345147
Presenter: An interested person in aspects of post – 1962 Burmese history
Description: At the January monthly seminar, Professor Nicholas Coppel presented an analysis of the 2025/2026 elections held in Myanmar to show the specific ways in which these represent a sham of the electoral process.
This month’s presentation will be mainly past oriented. The presenter will mainly discuss the
one-party 1974, 1978, 1981 and 1985 “elections” where only one candidate stood from the sole ruling Burma Socialist Programme Party and always got “elected”. The January to February 1974 elections were in preparation for 8 years, when on 1 March 1966, 1962 coup leader General Ne Win declared in a speech that “he would transfer power to the people” in due course. That sham if not fraudulent, statement was completed or “consummated” eight years later on 2 March 1974 when the Revolutionary Council Chairman Ne Win became President Ne Win of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma.
The President U Ne Win was “elected” and “re-elected” as “President. The background to this sham elections of 1974, 1978, 1981 and 1985 the 1974 Constitution will be briefly discussed. The
cancellation and nature of the 1990 “multiparty elections” and its special pleading if not sycophantic defence of its cancellation by a foreign diplomat and Burma-born foreign scholar will be rebutted. The presenter will conclude that this mainly past oriented presentation is prompted by the statement that “the past is not dead it is not even the past and present trends do not augur well for the future.
Questions and Answers will follow the presentations. For more information about AMI, please visit aummi.edu.au/.