By Anietie anii-bassey
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations will not recognize Myanmar’s recently held national elections, the first since the country’s military seized power in 2021, Philippine Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro said Thursday, delivering a significant setback to the ruling junta’s efforts to gain international acceptance.
Speaking at a news conference after hosting the regional bloc’s first major ministerial meetings of the year in the central Philippine city of Cebu, Lazaro confirmed that ASEAN had declined to endorse the vote and the multi-stage process that preceded it.
Asked directly whether the organization recognized the elections, she replied, “yes, as of now,” before adding that ASEAN “has not endorsed the three phases of the elections that were held.”
The refusal underscores the continued diplomatic isolation of Myanmar’s generals more than three years after they ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, an action that plunged the already impoverished nation into a widening civil war.
ASEAN, whose 11 members include Myanmar, has withheld recognition of the military-run administration since the takeover and has barred its top leaders from attending high-level regional meetings.
Myanmar’s military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party announced earlier this week that it had won the elections, a result that many observers had predicted after major opposition parties were excluded and dissent tightly controlled.
Under the country’s constitution, one quarter of parliamentary seats are reserved for the armed forces, effectively ensuring the military and allied parties maintain decisive influence over any legislature.
Opposition figures, human rights groups and independent analysts have dismissed the vote as neither free nor fair, arguing it was designed to confer a veneer of legitimacy on the generals’ continued rule rather than reflect popular will.
Lazaro declined to say whether ASEAN’s position might shift in the future, but the bloc’s current stance reflects its long-running struggle to forge a unified response to Myanmar’s conflict. The Philippines holds ASEAN’s rotating chair this year, stepping into a role that would ordinarily have fallen to Myanmar before it was suspended from leading the grouping following the coup.
Founded in 1967 during the Cold War, ASEAN brings together a diverse set of political systems, ranging from democratic governments such as the Philippines, a longstanding U.S. treaty ally, to more authoritarian states like Laos and Cambodia, which maintain close ties with Beijing. That diversity has often complicated consensus-building on sensitive security and human rights issues.
This year’s chairmanship carries the theme “Navigating our future, Together,” an appeal to regional solidarity that has already been tested by a range of security challenges. Last year, deadly clashes erupted between Thailand and Cambodia over a long-running border dispute before the two sides agreed to a ceasefire brokered with U.S. support, exposing strains within the bloc.
Beyond Myanmar and intra-regional tensions, ASEAN ministers meeting in Cebu also focused on maritime disputes in the South China Sea, Lazaro said. The officials agreed to hold monthly talks with China in hopes of concluding negotiations this year on a long-discussed code of conduct intended to prevent conflict in the contested waters.
The ministers have faced mounting pressure to finalize the non-aggression framework they first set for themselves three years ago. China asserts sweeping claims over much of the strategically vital sea lane, through which trillions of dollars in global trade pass each year, overlapping with claims by four ASEAN members: the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei.
Opening the meetings, Lazaro urged regional governments to exercise restraint and adhere to international law, warning that acts of aggression in Asia and unilateral moves elsewhere risk undermining the rules-based global order.
She noted that several ASEAN states have expressed alarm over a covert U.S. operation that led to the arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on orders from President Donald Trump, as well as Beijing’s increasingly assertive posture toward Taiwan and in the South China Sea.
Navigating relations with both Washington and Beijing—two of ASEAN’s largest trading partners and key defense players—has long posed a delicate diplomatic balancing act for the organization.
“Across our region, we continue to see tensions at sea, protracted internal conflicts and unresolved border and humanitarian concerns,” Lazaro said in her opening address to fellow ministers.
“At the same time, developments beyond Southeast Asia, including unilateral actions that carry cross-regional implications, continue to affect regional stability and erode multilateral institutions and the rules-based international order,” she added.
Against that backdrop, ASEAN’s refusal to recognize Myanmar’s elections signals that the junta’s path back to regional acceptance remains blocked, even as the bloc grapples with a growing list of geopolitical pressures at home and abroad.