NAYPYITAW: Myan­mar’s military staged a coup on Monday and detained senior politicians, including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, in a sharp reversal of the progress towards dem­ocracy the Southeast Asian nation has made following five decades of military rule.

An announcement read on military-owned Myaw­addy TV said commander-in-chief Senior Gen Min Aung Hlaing would be in charge of the country for one year.

It said the seizure was necessary because the government had not acted on the military’s claims of fraud in the November elections in which Suu Kyi’s ruling party won a majority of the parliamentary seats up for grabs and because it allowed the election to go ahead despite the coronavirus pandemic.

The coup sparked global condemnation, with the United States leading calls for democracy to be immediately restored.

Suu Kyi and President Win Myint were detained in the capital Naypyidaw before dawn, party spokesman Myo Nyunt said, just hours before parliament was meant to reconvene for the first time since the elections.

The military sealed off roads around the capital with armed troops, trucks and armoured personnel carriers. Military helicopters flew across the city.

A putsch had been expected for days, yet when it came it left Myanmar stunned — with roads to its main international airport blocked and communications cut — a country once more isolated from a world it only rejoined a decade ago.

“It’s extremely upsetting — I don’t want the coup,” said a 64-year-old Burmese man in Hlaing township, standing with a crowd outside a grocery stall.

The military declared, via its own television channel, a one-year state of emergency and announced that former general Myint Swe would be acting president for the next year.

It alleged “huge irregularities” in the November polls that the election commission had failed to address.

“As the situation must be resolved according to the law, a state of emergency is declared,” the announcement said.

The army later pledged to hold fresh elections after the year-long state of emergency.

Suu Kyi had issued a pre-emptive statement ahead of her detention calling on people “not to accept a coup”, according to a post on the official Facebook page of the party’s chairperson.

In Yangon, the former capital that remains Myanmar’s commercial hub, troops seized the city hall just ahead of the announcement, according to a journalist.

Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2021