Aung San Suu Kyi faces months of delicate negotiations with Myanmar’s entrenched army after confirmation that her party won a majority of seats in last weekend’s historic elections.
On Friday the National League for Democracy (NLD) pushed past the 329-seat mark, giving her decades-old democracy movement with an absolute parliamentary majority and a mandate to rule. The latest results gave the NLD 364 seats in both houses; the ruling Union Solidarity Development party (USDP) had taken just 40.
The Nobel peace prize winner, 70, spent much of the past quarter-century under house arrest as she repeatedly fought for democratic reforms. But her election win, five years after her release, means she can pass legislation, form a government and handpick a president.
NLD supporters have been celebrating in Myanmar’s former colonial capital, Yangon, since polling day last Sunday, when party monitoring missions who were overseeing counting in polling stations around the country of 51 million reported to head office that the win would be big.
Roads came to a near standstill outside the NLD headquarters as hundreds of people draped in the party flag – a golden peacock and white star on a red background – danced to NLD songs that only a few years ago could have landed listeners in jail.
At a celebration on Monday a woman in her fifties told the Guardian she had no interest in politics during the years of military rule. With Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, running the country since the 1960s, the population had no voice.
“I’m here because I support Aung San Suu Kyi,” Tin Tin Min said, surrounded by other women, their faces covered in a whitish paste called Thanaka and used as sunscreen. “I want a big change in Myanmar.”
That was the key issue for voters, many of whom had woken at 3am to patiently stand in line and cast their vote. A stamp for the incumbent party, made up of former generals who had taken to wearing suits, would continue the status quo, while a vote for the NLD meant change, voters believed. Dozens of the NLD’s elected parliamentarians were former political prisoners.
By Friday morning, when the NLD’s majority was confirmed, the party atmosphere in Yangon had abated. Cars beeped at each other in the tropical heat and shoppers bought vegetables. There was no gathering outside the NLD headquarters.
An NLD government would be the first administration not chosen by the country’s military establishment and their political allies, or a direct military junta, since the early 1960s.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been careful not to antagonise the military, with whom she will have to work. In 1990, the NLD also won an election but the generals annulled the result, imprisoned her colleagues and placed her under house arrest.
In her first speech a day after the polls, she warned her supporters not to anger the losers. “I want to remind you all that even candidates who didn’t win have to accept the winners but it is important not to provoke the candidates who didn’t win to make them feel bad,” she told cheering crowds from the balcony of the NLD headquarters.
President Thein Sein has made it clear that what happened in 1990 will not be repeated. His spokesman released a statement this week saying “we will work peacefully in the transfer [of power].”
A longtime Myanmar academic, Marie Lall, of University College London, said Aung San Suu Kyi’s re-entry into politics was only possible with the reforms implemented by Thein Sein. “Without him setting the path, bringing Aung San Suu Kyi back into the fold, she wouldn’t be where she is now. She wouldn’t be an MP, the NLD wouldn’t be able to campaign and they wouldn’t be this strong.”
But Aung San Suu Kyi wants more than her parliamentary majority. The British-educated politician is barred from the presidency – the most powerful position – as the constitution prevents those with foreign children from holding the post. Yet she has repeatedly declared that a triumph for the NLD would place her “above the president” and said this week the next president would have no authority.
After her win, she invited the army chief, president and the parliamentary speaker to discuss a national reconciliation government. A small circle of army generals, made rich by years of autocracy and with much to lose, will be eager to hear her plans.
The new members of parliament will not take their seats in both houses until February and the president will assume power by the end of March. Aung San Suu Kyi has not signalled who she will choose as her president, although it is likely to be a loyal ally.
There is a lot at stake for Myanmar, whose reform process lifted international sanctions, brought investment and reduced south-east Asia’s poorest state’s dependence on China.
“This is in many ways a momentous opportunity for the people of Burma,” the White House’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, said this week, using the country’s former name. “We had been very focused on this election. It is a critical milestone in evaluating Burma’s democratic transition.”
With power finally hers, Aung San Suu Kyi may find it hard to live up to her international image as a human rights advocate. The politician was criticised during her campaign for not fielding a single Muslim candidate and not speaking out more forcefully against the persecution of the minority Rohingya population.
Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights, an advocacy group of south-east Asian legislators, said impunity for rights violations by security forces persisted, particularly in ethnic areas; women continue to face of sexual violence, and systematic discrimination against Rohingya Muslims threatens their very existence.
“We remain concerned about the politics of exclusion and hatred,” it said. “While we were relieved that the vote passed peacefully, we call on the people of Myanmar and their newly elected leaders to reject the forces of extremism and embrace political inclusion and respect for diversity.”
