“ELECTED…Not winner…Not yet!!!” reads the caption to a photograph of Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s opposition leader, posted this week on the Facebook page of a victorious candidate from her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), in last month’s general election. The NLD won an astonishing four-fifths of contested seats in the lower house of parliament—enough to allow it to choose the next president. But the party has been here before. In 1990 it also won an election in a landslide; but it was never allowed to take power from the ruling army, which still dominates the present, notionally civilian, government. A series of meetings this month between Miss Suu Kyi and the regime’s leading lights has given confidence that, this time, the army will honour the election result. Many questions remain, however, about how much power Miss Suu Kyi and her triumphant party will have. It is still not entirely clear they have won.
After procrastinating for nearly a month after the vote, both the incumbent president, Thein Sein, a former general, and the serving army chief, Min Aung Hlaing, held short meetings with Miss Suu Kyi, to discuss the...Continue reading
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