"Myanmar’s newly elected parliament is scheduled to meet for the first time on Monday against the backdrop of a threat by the military to stage a coup over unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in the November 2020 election. On Thursday, the military’s commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing plunged the country into its greatest political crisis since the transition to democracy began in 2008 by threatening to abolish the constitution. “The constitution is the Mother Law. We have to follow the constitution. If the law is not respected or followed, we must abolish it. Even if it is the constitution, we must abolish it,” he said in a speech quoted by the military’s Facebook page. After two days of uncertainty, the military released an official statement on Saturday, apparently backtracking. “The Tatmadaw will defend the 2008 Constitution and only act within the boundary of existing laws,” it said, accusing the media of taking Min Aung Hlaing’s comments out of context. The incident came after a months-long campaign to discredit the November election, despite no firm evidence of wrongdoing. The military’s electoral proxy, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), has demanded a new election supervised by the military, filed nearly 200 complaints, and took the issue to the Supreme Court. Min Aung Hlaing’s comments sent shockwaves through Myanmar, which emerged only from decades of military dictatorship in 2010 and held just its second democratic election in November last year. In both 2015 and 2020, the National League of Democracy (NLD) won landslide victories that delivered it a clear majority in parliament, despite the military automatically receiving 25 percent of the available seats..."