YANGON, Myanmar, Jan 25, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - Myanmar holds the final round of its month-long election on Sunday, with the dominant pro-military party on course for a landslide in a junta-run vote critics say will prolong the army's grip on power.

Tropical Myanmar has a long history of military rule, but the generals took a back seat for a decade of civilian-led reforms.

That ended in a 2021 military coup when democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi was detained, civil war broke out, and the country descended into a humanitarian crisis.

The election's third and final phase opens in dozens of constituencies across the country at 6 am on Sunday (2330 GMT Saturday), just a week shy of the coup's five-year anniversary.

The military has pledged that the vote will return power to the people, but it is not being held in wide areas of the country carved out by rebel groups.

With Suu Kyi sidelined and her hugely popular party dissolved, democracy advocates say the ballot is stacked with military allies.

"I don't expect anything from this election," a 34-year-old Yangon resident told AFP, requesting anonymity for security reasons.

"I think things will just keep dragging on."

The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) -- packed with retired officers and described by analysts as a military puppet -- won more than 85 percent of elected lower house seats and two-thirds of those in the upper house in the first two phases of the poll.

A military-drafted constitution also reserves a quarter of seats for the armed forces in both houses.

The combined parliament will pick the president, and junta chief Min Aung Hlaing has not ruled out taking the role.

Analysts say the military is stage-managing the poll to give its rule a veneer of civilian legitimacy.

The anonymous Yangon resident, feeling pressure to participate, pledged to cast her ballot for "any party except the USDP".

"I know what the final result will be, but I want to mess things up a little with my vote," she said.

Official results are set to be released late in the week, but the USDP could claim victory as soon as Monday.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party thrashed it in the last elections in 2020, before the military seized power on February 1, 2021, making unfounded allegations of widespread vote-rigging.

"Electoral fraud is a serious and disgusting issue in a democracy," Min Aung Hlaing said on state media on Tuesday.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi, 80, remains detained incommunicado at an unknown location on charges rights monitors dismiss as politically motivated.