There was a time for elections in 1990 but the military junta refused to let go and even sent Aung San Suu Kyi to jail earlier for leading the movement for democracy.
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He added that the extent of Suu Kyi’s victory stunned everyone – the NLD, the military and the world’s foremost experts on Myanmar like himself. “She congratulated me on accepting the [election] results swiftly”, Mann, who until previous year was the head of the ruling USDP party, was quoted as saying by Voice of America.
Suu Kyi on Tuesday sent letters requesting to meet with President Thein Sein, Burma Army commander-in-chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing and Union Parliament Speaker Shwe Mann, with all three men agreeing to sit down with her, though a date for the occasion has not yet been set.
Brad Adams, Asia Director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), said on November 4: “Long lines of voters on November 8 won’t make these fundamentally flawed elections free and fair”.
While Ms Suu Kyi has been criticised for relative passivity regarding the systematic persecution of Rohingya Muslims in the country, several days before the election she did promise to protect minorities isolated in “ethnic ghettoes”, which was widely interpreted as addressing Rohingya’s plight.
The National League for Democracy (NLD)’s outright majority in Myanmar’s parliament allows it to form the next government and elect a new president.
Myanmar’s president runs the executive, with the exception of the powerful ministries of interior, defense and border security, which are controlled by the military.
Thein Sein’s military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party lost the election by a landslide. The old law-making body would continue as the caretaker legislature until January.
There are some possible interpretations of what national reconciliation may mean for the NLD, the President and the military.
The political parties will also have to participate in the drafting of a framework for political dialogue with eight ethnic armed groups that signed a nationwide ceasefire agreement on October 15. This would have been unthinkable just five years ago, when the controlling military regime forbid it.
Suu Kyi spoke to Obama, whose administration has been one of the key allies in Myanmar’s sometimes rocky transition to democracy since 2011. The party also holds pluralities in the Kachin and Chin state legislatures, though some seats have yet to be reported.
For all of the formal limitations placed on a civilian government, perhaps more important is that the military remains the de facto economic and coercive power in the country. She grew up in a political environment – the daughter of General Aung San, who is regarded as the father of Burmese independence.
But Win Myint, 54, a Bangkok-based analyst, said future relations between the NLD and ethnic parties may not be so rosy.
Will Aung San Suu Kyi be president?
“I hope there will be a solution by an NLD government”, he said. It was not clear if Win Htein, one of the most influential politicians in the party, was speaking on behalf of the party or giving a personal view. The USDP is made up largely for former junta members.
“The NLD has overachieved in the election but there is a strong chance it will underachieve in government unless it takes (these) necessary steps”, he said.
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Myanmar is a patchwork of ethnic identities with over 130 officially-recognised minority groups, many with distinct languages and cultures.
