Winning Myanmar’s election turned out to be easier than expected for Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition party, but steering the nation is to be a test of how the Nobel Peace Prize laureate balances her moral vision with political realities.
Almost complete returns released by the election commission yesterday showed Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) with an astounding majority that gives it control of the lower and upper houses of Myanmar’s parliament, along with enough votes to dictate who is to be president when the new lawmakers convene their first session next year.
“The election result represents the people’s retribution against the military, which kept them under its boots for decades,” former political prisoner and prominent journalist Aung Din said, adding that the extent of Aung San Suu Kyi’s victory stunned everyone — the NLD, the military and the world’s foremost experts on Myanmar like himself.
With the military automatically allotted 25 percent of the seats in each chamber, the NLD had to win two-thirds of the seats being contested to get the majority — not just 50 percent plus one. It met its mark easily. By yesterday morning, it had won about 78 percent of the combined houses — 387 of the 498 non-military seats, while the ruling military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party had just 41.
Aung San Suu Kyi won points in the past by confronting the military, but now that they are to be partners in ruling the nation, she would need the generals on her side in order to push through her party’s agenda.
At the same time, she has to meet the huge expectations of her supporters for dramatic reforms.
In some areas this might be easy, in others she would be up against vested interests willing to fight her.
Factory workers are her faithful followers, but she might find it more important to appease factory owners — who would be unhappy with aggressive pro-labor policies — in order to keep the economy humming. Similarly, villagers uprooted by mining and infrastructure projects want justice that has been in short supply under the military-backed government. Meeting their desires could be off-putting to foreign investors. Cracking down on the pervasive problem of land-grabbing would also earn her powerful enemies.
Aung San Suu Kyi faces another dilemma in dealing with the nation’s deep and long-running ethnic fractures. More than a dozen ethnic minorities for decades have fielded guerrilla armies in on-again, off-again insurgencies to try to win greater autonomy.
In opposition, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party could count on many of these groups as allies, partly on the basis of the concept that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend.”
Now, these groups would be looking to cash in their chips for sticking with her.
Another challenge is dealing with racial and religious strife involving the nation’s ethnic Rohingya minority and other Muslims. Communal violence over the past several years has left hundreds dead and as many as 140,000 people homeless.
The efforts of radical nationalist Buddhist monks to paint Suu Kyi as soft in defending the religion of about 90 percent of the nation’s population failed to have much of an effect on the election results.
For its part, the NLD did little to stand up for the rights of Myanmar’s Muslims and the issue remains a flash point domestically and a sore point with foreign friends such as the US.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was