Myanmar’s president vowed Sunday to abide by the law to ensure a smooth transition to another government next year, after his ruling party was trounced in the November 8 general election.
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With only three seats in the bicameral parliament yet to be declared, the victory allows the National League for Democracy (NLD) to form the next government after years of disenfranchisement under the military’s 1962-2011 rule.
The ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party has taken 115 seats, accounting for 10 percent of the total, including 29 in the House of Representatives, 12 in the House of Nationalities, and 72 in the Region or State Parliament, as well as two ethnic representatives to the Region or State Parliament.
The lame-duck session is unusual for a parliamentary democracy, where usually the legislature is dissolved before an election and convenes with the newly elected members.
The NLD will face a variety of challenges, not least of which is the huge tide of pent-up expectations evidenced by the vote. Its lack of experience in public administration is another big question.
“She congratulated me for accepting the election result early and comforted me”, he said in a Facebook posting, with a photograph of them together, smiling.
Aung San Suu Kyi is barred from seeking the presidency under the current military-drafted constitution, because her former husband and two sons are foreign nationals.
At a time when wild jubilation is taking place all over Myanmar and accolades are being heaped on the Nobel laureate, the lady, as she is called in the length and breadth of Myanmar, has played her cards adroitly, knowing fully well that in spite of the massive numerical superiority in parliament she is hamstrung by the Myanmar army’s constitutional status.
But also crushed in the rout were dozens of parties representing ethnic minorities, who make up less than half the country’s 51.5 million population, and who have a long history of antagonism and insurgency against the military junta that ruled Myanmar for half a century.
To many ethnic leaders, the NLD’s approach already seems high-handed. In any case the MEA government will be able to take charge only in February 2016. In the 1990 elections – the last elections considered to have been free and fair – the NLD won a decisive victory by capturing a few 80 percent of the seats contested. The NLD’s surprise victory in many of those areas left many parties without representation, or with just a handful of seats in the national and local assemblies.
The delay in announcing the NLD’s majority toned down exuberance among party supporters, with the streets outside the NLD headquarters in Yangon looking as they do on normal working days.
Under the government of President Thein Sein, the so-called nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA) was signed with eight ethnic armed groups on October 15; however, seven other groups did not participate.
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President Thein Sein sought to allay such fears on Sunday during his first speech since the election when he insisted that his semi-civilian government would hand over power, while claiming credit for the country’s transition.
