Suu Kyi’s win brings Burmese new hope
Burma could be headed toward a new age of change
Election victory, if confirmed, allows Democracy activist to take public office after years of house arrest,
RANGOON, Burma — Democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi has won a landslide election victory Sunday, according to her party, allowing her to take public office after years of confinement and harassment over her attempts to confront this country’s longtime military dictatorship.
The election results, if confirmed, could be the start of a new age of change headed by the 66-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who had been imprisoned in her home for the better part of two decades.
“It is the people’s victory! We have taught them a lesson,” said a shopkeeper who goes by the single name Thein and who wore a T-shirt with Suu Kyi’s picture on the front and on the back a picture of a fighting peacock, the symbol of the National League for Democracy party.
Last year, the military junta handed power to a civilian government dominated by retired army officers. The government of President Thein Sein, a retired lieutenant general, has freed political prisoners, signed truces with rebel groups and opened a direct dialogue with Suu Kyi.
Suu Kyi in return endorsed Thein Sein’s changes and agreed to run in Sunday’s elections after her party boycotted the last vote, in 2010, as unfair. Once in the parliament, she can seek to influence policy and challenge the government from within, but she also risks legitimizing a regime she has fought against for decades, experts say.
Suu Kyi is in a “strategic symbiosis” with some of the country’s generals and ex-generals, said Maung Zarni, a Burma expert and a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics.
“They need her and she needs them to break the 25 years of political stalemate,” Zarni said. “She holds the key for the regime’s need for its international acceptance and normalization.”
Sunday’s by-elections were called to fill 45 vacant seats in the 664-seat national parliament of Burma, also known as Myanmar. National League for Democracy spokesman Han Than said early today that the party had won at least 43 of the 44 seats it had contested.
The results, which must be verified by Burma’s election commission, came despite allegations of “rampant irregularities” at the polls. Win said that by midday, the party had filed more than 50 complaints to the election commission.
He said most alleged violations concerned waxed ballot papers that made it difficult to mark votes. There were also ballot cards that lacked the election commission’s seal, which would render them invalid.
Although her party will be a small part of the parliament, Suu Kyi’s candidacy has resurrected hope among Burma’s downtrodden who have been under military rule for 49 years.
Crowds of supporters mobbed Suu Kyi as she visited a polling station in a farming village in Rangoon that has no electricity or running water.
“She may not be able to do anything at this stage,” said voter Go Khehtay, who cast his ballot for Suu Kyi at Wah Thin Kha, one of the dirt-poor villages in Rangoon, “but one day, I believe she’ll be able to bring real change.”