Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi receives flowers from
supporters as she leaves the headquarters of her National League for
Democracy party in Yangon, Myanmar Monday, April 2. Suu Kyi claimed
victory Monday in Myanmar’s historic by-election, saying she hoped it
will mark the beginning of a new era for the long-repressed country.
Aye Aye Win &Todd
Pitman
Yangon, Myanmar (AP) - Aung San Suu Kyi claimed
victory Monday in Myanmar’s historic by-election, saying she hoped it
would mark the beginning of a new era for the long-repressed country.
Suu Kyi spoke to thousands of cheering supporters who
gathered outside her opposition party headquarters a day after her party
claimed she had won a parliamentary seat in the closely watched vote.
Official confirmation of the results could take days,
but the people of Myanmar have reacted with jubilation.
“The success we are having is the success of the
people,” Suu Kyi said, as a sea of supporters chanted her name and
thrust their hands into the air to flash “V’’ for victory signs.
“It is not so much our triumph as a triumph of the
people who have decided that they have to be involved in the political
process in this country,” she said. “We hope this will be the beginning
of a new era.”
If confirmed, Suu Kyi will take public office for the
first time and lead a small bloc of opposition lawmakers in Myanmar’s
military-dominated Parliament.
The victory would mark a major milestone in the
Southeast Asian nation, which is emerging from a ruthless era of
military rule, and an astonishing reversal of fortune for a woman who
became one of the world’s most prominent prisoners of conscience.
Unofficial counts continued to trickle in Monday from
poll watchers within Suu Kyi’s party, and spokesman Han Than said the
opposition had won at least 43 of the 44 parliament seats it had
contested. Those included all four seats up for grabs in the capital,
Naypyitaw, which is populated by civil servants and would be an
embarrassing sign of defeat for the government.
The former junta had kept Suu Kyi imprisoned in her
lakeside home for the better part of two decades. When she was finally
released in late 2010, just after a general election that was deemed by
most as neither free nor fair, few could have imagined she would so
quickly make the leap from democracy advocate to elected official -
opening the way for a potential presidential run in 2015.
But Myanmar has changed dramatically over that time.
The junta finally ceded power last year, and although many of its
leaders merely swapped their military uniforms for civilian suits, they
went on to stun even their staunchest critics by releasing political
prisoners, signing cease-fires with rebels, relaxing press censorship
and opening a direct dialogue with Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1991 while under house arrest.
Hoping to convince the international community of its
progress, Myanmar invited dozens of Western and Asian election observers
to monitor the vote and granted visas to hundreds of foreign
journalists.
Suu Kyi herself said Friday that campaigning had been
marred by irregularities and could not be considered fair - allegations
her party reiterated Sunday.
The topdown revolution has left Myanmar befuddled and
wondering how it happened - or at least, why now? One theory says the
military-backed regime had long been desperate for legitimacy and a
lifting of Western sanctions, and its leadership had quietly recognized
that their impoverished country, formerly known as Burma, had fallen far
behind the rest of skyscraper-rich Asia.
Sunday’s by-election was called to fill 45 vacant
seats in Myanmar’s 664-member bicameral assembly, and the
military-backed government had little to lose by holding it. The last
vote had already been engineered in their favor - the army was allotted
25 percent of the seats, and the ruling party won most of the rest.
David Scott Mathieson, an expert on Myanmar for Human
Rights Watch, said “the real danger of the by-elections is the overblown
expectations many in the West have cast on them.”
“The hard work really does start afterward,” he said.
“Constitutional reform, legal reform, tackling systemic corruption,
sustainable economic development, continued human rights challenges ...
will take many years.”
