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Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at the National League for Democracy party headquarters the day after parliamentary elections in Myanmar.
YANGON, Myanmar ? The party of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said Monday that it won nearly every seat in the weekend?s closely watched by-elections, a startling result that showed strong support for the opposition even among government employees and soldiers.
Her party?s apparent landslide adds to the enormous symbolism of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi?s own election to Parliament after 15 years of house arrest and the violent suppression of her supporters. She was ebullient on Monday, speaking of the ?beginning of a new era? in a brief address to a tightly packed crowd outside her party?s headquarters.
?What is important is not how many seats we have won ? although of course we are extremely gratified that we have won so many ? but the fact that the people are so enthusiastic about participating in the democratic process,? she said.
But the moment of celebration and hope for long-suffering democracy advocates here is a threatening development for the country?s hard-liners, raising the possibility of a backlash against President Thein Sein. It was he who reached out to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi last year and persuaded her to join the new political system put in place by the country?s long-time military rulers.
In a country without a tradition of opinion polling ? surveys were seen as potentially subversive during decades of military rule ? the snapshot of the population?s feelings provided by the election is worrying for the new government.
In total, elections were held in 45 districts, a small fraction of the more than 600 seats in Parliament. The National League for Democracy appears to have won in 43 districts, according to Hein Min, a member of an independent Burmese election monitoring group. The election commission and the ruling party were largely silent on Monday, with official results expected later in the week. But state television confirmed that the National League for Democracy had won 40 seats and said that counting was continuing in the other 5 constituencies.
Perhaps most surprising, the party appears to have won all four seats in contention in Naypyidaw, the country?s new and relatively isolated capital, which is mostly populated by civil servants. They seem to have voted against the very government they serve.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi?s party performed well at military bases, according to Burmese journalists monitoring the results, in an echo of the last time free elections were held, in 1990. Then, too, her party swept with the support of many soldiers. But the junta canceled the results, and kept Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi in detention for years to come.
The opposition?s sway in areas populated by minorities was mixed, winning one seat in the ethnic Shan areas but losing the other.
Analysts say Mr. Thein Sein, himself a former junta member, is now counting on the United States and European Union to lift long-standing economic sanctions to protect him from hard-liners inside his party worried that the results bode badly for general elections due in 2015, when, unlike the elections Sunday, enough seats will be in play that the military-backed ruling party could risk losing power.
?It?s impossible that they are going to just look at this landslide victory and carry on business as usual,? said U Thant Myint-U, a historian and former United Nations official who is one of the leading experts on the country.
?There?s a possibility that some within the establishment will get nervous and see this as a threat,? he said. ?But I think the message that is more likely to get to the government is that they need to move that much more quickly to implement policies that benefit the people.?
For months, officials in Washington and European capitals said the government?s comportment during the elections would be a major factor in determining whether to lift punitive economic restrictions. The European Union is meeting this month to decide.
Win Min, a Burmese scholar based in the United States, predicted that the United States would now be inclined to remove them. ?It?s likely that the U.S. will respond as best as they can, knowing it will strengthen reformers in the government, especially the president,? he said.
On Monday, the White House called the election an ?important step? in the country?s democratic development.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi did not address the sanctions question in her public remarks on Monday; she has supported the punitive measures as a means of pressuring the government to change. She said her party would file reports on election irregularities ?with the intention of making sure that things improve in future.?
And she asked for cooperation from all parties to ?create a genuinely democratic atmosphere in our nation.?
?We congratulate them for having taken part in the elections in the spirit of democracy,? she said.
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi said the party?s priorities would be to push for peace in restive ethnic minority areas, institute the ?rule of law? and support amendments to the Constitution. One of the party?s main complaints about the Constitution is that a quarter of seats in Parliament are reserved for the military.
?We hope that this will be the beginning of a new era,? she said, ?where there will be more emphasis on the role of the people in the everyday politics in our country.?
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=5793fc9dfd4784c3b15c76465c7c2622
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