BANGKOK, Jan 13 (Reuters) - His name is not on the ballot, and his photographs don't appear on campaign posters. But one man looms large over the general election underway in Myanmar: junta chief Min Aung Hlaing.
The 69-year-old general has ruled the impoverished Southeast Asian nation since ousting Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government in a 2021 coup. That sparked a civil war of unprecedented violence, which has displaced millions and left much of Myanmar's borderlands in rebel hands.
The general said in a New Year address, as votes for the first phase of the three-stage election were being counted, that he intends to hand over "state responsibilities" to the next government.
Suu Kyi's party, however, has been dissolved and other major opposition parties are not contesting the polls, which have been widely criticised as an exercise to keep the junta in power via proxies. The United Nations and Western rights groups have said the elections are neither free nor fair.
Reuters interviewed six people familiar with Min Aung Hlaing as well as two analysts of junta politics who offered insight into the thinking of the enigmatic general. Since the coup, he has only had limited diplomatic contact with many of Myanmar's regional neighbours and has rarely spoken to non-state-controlled media.
The junta chief and acting president is a rigid military leader, but also a political creature with a fine-tuned sense for managing the country's elites, according to three of the people and the two analysts.
Those qualities, the people said, have helped him keep power through battlefield defeats that have dented the military's prestige and hold over the country, exposing Min Aung Hlaing to criticism from supporters of the armed forces. At least 16,600 civilians have died in conflict since the coup, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a coalition of independent international researchers.
Pulling back from absolute rule and sharing power through elections functions as "an elite management strategy, diffusing responsibility and preserving regime cohesion," said Naing Min Khant, program associate at the Institute for Strategy and Policy - Myanmar, a think-tank in Thailand.
"He became the leader not only because of military ruthlessness but because of his subtle skills that help reduce all sorts of pressure around him," said another of the people, a foreign former official who has met Min Aung Hlaing.
"I think if another person was put in that position, there may have been even more pressure on them."
Myanmar's information ministry did not reply to a request for comment on Reuters' findings.
PACTS AND LOYALISTS
Min Aung Hlaing has handed some generals lucrative positions atop military-linked businesses, even as he occasionally detained other senior officers, including court marshalling one likely successor.
Such moves have helped control potential rivals, according to Naing Min Khant.
"Power-sharing is managed through elite pacts embedded within the officer corps, where regime survival is closely tied to collective officer survival," the analyst said.
At the same time, Min Aung Hlaing has prioritised keeping important positions for loyalists, including some experienced at dealing with foreign leaders, two of the people said.
Diplomatic backing from China, in particular, has bolstered the general's position and supported the junta's recent limited comeback on some frontlines, Reuters reported in December.
Among the loyalists is retired military officer and former U.N. ambassador Than Swe, who serves as junta foreign minister, the people said. One of them added that the diplomat has been coaching Min Aung Hlaing as he emerges from diplomatic isolation.
Than Swe has also since been part of efforts to rebuild diplomatic relationships with the Association of Southeast Asian Nation bloc that froze ties with the generals soon after the coup.
Min Aung Hlaing's interest in politics was clear even before the coup, when he was serving as armed forces commander-in-chief, said another person familiar with the general.
A previous junta had pared back the military's outsized role in administering the country and handed power to a quasi-civilian government in the 2010s, but the general continued meeting community and religious leaders, the person said.
"All that didn't make sense, if you were only a professional soldier," they said.
'THE TRIUMPHANT ELITES'
The fourth of five siblings born to a family from Myanmar's south, Min Aung Hlaing read law at university in Yangon, then the country's capital.
In 1977, he passed out of the Defence Services Academy, the crucible of the officer corps and made a steady ascent through the ranks. This included time as a commander in Myanmar's historically restive borderlands.
The academy's motto - "The Triumphant Elites of the Future" - signals the institution's central role in shaping generations of military brass.
Most leave seeing the military as the self-appointed guardian of national unity, as well as of the rights of the majority Bamar ethnic group and the Buddhist religion many of them follow.
That sense of the generals as the country's ultimate protectors pushed Min Aung Hlaing to take absolute control in February 2021, months after a military-backed party was crushed at polls by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, said one of the officials familiar with his thinking.
"He felt justified in doing the coup," the official said. "Suu Kyi was not listening to him, to his concerns."
Suu Kyi, now 80, is serving a 27-year sentence for offences including incitement, corruption and election fraud. She denies the charges.
The politician has spent previous bouts of detention in the relative comfort of house arrest. This time, the junta has not released specifics on her whereabouts or wellbeing, though it insists she is in good health.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim made a failed diplomatic push for the release of Suu Kyi last year, according to the foreign former official.
"Min Aung Hlaing quickly closed the door on that," the person said. "I know that this was their red line."
Anwar's office and a lawyer who previously represented Suu Kyi did not respond to requests for comment.
TRANSITION OF POWER?
After casting his vote inside the heavily-guarded capital of Naypyitaw on December 28, a smiling Min Aung Hlaing walked up to a gaggle of reporters, where he was asked if he planned to become president following the polls.
"I can't simply say that I want to do this or that. I am not a leader of a political party," he said.
However, the general has recently indicated he is considering appointing a successor as armed forces chief and will himself likely move into a fully political role, said the official familiar with his thinking, without specifying what position he might take.
"There will be a new government," the source said. "He won't be holding on to (absolute) power."
Under the military-drafted constitution, the president wields significant executive power but does not have authority over the armed forces.
The president is picked by a college of elected and military-appointed lawmakers, according to the constitution. The military retains the right to select ministers in charge of national security.
Early results from the general elections put the Union Solidarity and Development Party, headed by retired generals, in the lead. The date when the final results will be announced has not been declared.
The next generation of military leaders isn't likely to take a significantly different approach toward Suu Kyi or the resistance movement, said Maj. Naung Yoe, who left the junta after the coup and now researches the civil war.
"There might be some who don't like the way the military is handling things and they don't like Min Aung Hlaing," he said.
"But that does not mean that they like the revolution."
(Reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal and Panu Wongcha-um; Additional reporting by Reuters Staff; Editing by Katerina Ang)
