While Myanmar lingers in post-election limbo following a poll in which Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party is thought to have triumphed, thoughts are naturally turning to what will happen next. This process is raising more questions than answers.
One reason why the delay in confirming the election results is worrying is because Myanmar has been in this situation before. At the last election 25 years ago, Ms Suu Kyi’s party also won a convincing election victory but the junta that had ruled the country since staging a coup in 1962 refused to cede power and she spent most of the next 20 years as a political prisoner.
This time, Ms Suu Kyi was prohibited from running for the presidency because of a constitutional change forbidding those whose children or spouses hold foreign citizenship – as her late husband did and her children do. The rule was seen as being aimed specifically at her because as a Nobel peace laureate, she is by far her party’s greatest electoral asset.
While that was a worrying sign for the nature of Myanmar's fledgling return to democracy, so too was Ms Suu Kyi's declaration that as the NLD party leader, she would choose the president and that person would be subservient to her decisions. Similarly concerning is the silence by Ms Suu Kyi – a world-famous advocate of human rights – about the treatment of Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.
Even if the indications that the NLD secured 75 per cent of the vote are officially confirmed, they will at best be sharing power with the military, which has one quarter of the seats in parliament allocated to it. The constitution also ensures that the military, not the parliament, retains control over large parts of the bureaucracy, including running the domestic security organisation that spies on Myanmar citizens.
While these are all matters of genuine concern, they have to be balanced against the decision of the junta to embrace democracy. This in turn led to sanctions being lifted, allowing the country to reap the economic rewards of joining the global economy. Now that the people of Myanmar have had a taste of life outside the isolationist policies of the past, they are unlikely to want to return to the old ways. That in itself is a victory. Having an inclusive government that will represent the best interests of everyone would be a true triumph.
