BANGKOK (AP) — Political parties in military-run Myanmar on Tuesday kicked off their election campaigns, two months ahead of scheduled national polls that are widely seen as an effort to confer legitimacy on the military’s 2021 seizure of power, even as the country’s civil war precludes voting in many areas.

Campaigning began just a day after U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, in a meeting with leaders of Southeast Asian nations, warned that the planned election could cause further instability and deepen Myanmar’s crisis.

Critics of the military-led government charge that the polls, which are set to begin on Dec. 28, will be neither free nor fair.

Fifty-seven parties have registered for the contest but Aung San Suu Kyi ’s National League for Democracy, which won the last two elect

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