It may depend on just how farcical regime elections are. If ethnic parties contest and polls are held in 160 townships, maybe ASEAN accepts. But no ethnic parties and polls only in 80 townships, maybe not a sufficient display of 'credibility'

Just a guess.

See response beginning at 26:25

He says elections are not the priority but rather peace and security, humanitarian assistance, and dialogue.

My read is that ASEAN can accept a vaneer of legitimacy, but that elections that fail to achieve a minimum threshold of believability may not be accepted.

I'm not so sure that ASEAN would support the elections, depending on how they play out. See PM Anwar's comments at SLD a few days ago.

youtu.be/lZ4OU52mxog?...

The small portion of Karen where the KNU tours foreign journalists tells us little about the rest of the country. Solar is not coming to all 55 million people in Myanmar anytime soon. Starlink operates unofficially and can be turned off by Elon Musk at a whim.

These things are bandaids, not cures.

These services may exist on a scale that can support armed groups and their activities, but not millions of everyday people or a formal economy. Karen State is also largely at the mercy of Thai policy. The outlook is poverty and violent instability punctuated by partial ad hoc solutions for a few.

Beijing offers Myanmar's parties to conflict with both opportunities and costs/limits. For the junta, the benefit is baseline survival. For the EAOs, relations with China have granted increased territory and military-politico power that was inconceivable 2 years ago.