[A nominally civilian
government took power one year ago after years of oppressive military rule and introduced political changes it hoped
would persuade Western nations to end economic sanctions. Sunday’s elections
were seen as a barometer for the government’s commitment to change. To many
here they represented a sea change; for the first time in two decades people in
44 districts across Myanmar had the chance to vote for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s
party, the National League for Democracy.]
YANGON, Myanmar — Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the
democracy advocate silenced for two decades by Myanmar’s generals with house
arrests and overturned elections, assumed a new role in her country’s political
transition on Sunday, apparently winning a seat in Parliament to make the
remarkable shift from dissident to lawmaker.
The main opposition
party announced her victory on Sunday; if the result is confirmed, Ms. Aung San
Suu Kyi, a 1991 Nobel Peace laureate and the face of Myanmar’s democracy
movement, will hold a public office for the first time. But despite her global
prominence, she will be joining a Parliament that is still overwhelmingly
controlled by the military-backed ruling party.
A nominally civilian
government took power one year ago after years of oppressive military rule and introduced political changes it hoped
would persuade Western nations to end economic sanctions. Sunday’s elections
were seen as a barometer for the government’s commitment to change. To many
here they represented a sea change; for the first time in two decades people in
44 districts across Myanmar had the chance to vote for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s
party, the National League for Democracy.
Outside Myanmar, Ms.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 66, who spent 15 years under house arrest, is a symbol of
moral fortitude in the face of oppression. Inside Myanmar, she is also a
repository for the wide-ranging hopes of a long-suffering population.
With her entry into
electoral politics, that role may change. Her party, which has been vague in
its prescriptions for the country, will be forced to take specific stands in
the country’s two houses of Parliament, where the debates have been
increasingly lively in recent months.
But on Sunday, hundreds
of frenzied supporters reveled in Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s victory as tallies
from polling places, displayed on a large screen outside her party’s
headquarters in Yangon, showed her with an overwhelming lead in her race.
“I feel like I want to
dance,” said Khin Maung Myint, a 65-year-old painter in the crowd. “I’m so
happy that they beat the military. We need a party that stands for the people.”
U Min Zaw, a goldsmith
who also supports Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, was more reserved, saying that
he realized his vote on Sunday would go only so far — the dominance of the
ruling party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, would remain intact.
“This is just a little
step, just a little democracy,” Mr. Min Zaw said. The National League for
Democracy will have at best a small minority in Parliament, he said. But “the
future is brighter than ever.”
Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Istanbul for a meeting on Syria, welcomed Sunday’s
vote in Myanmar, also known as Burma.
“It is too early to know
what the progress of recent months means and whether it will be sustained,” Mrs.
Clinton said. “There are no guarantees about what lies ahead for the people of
Burma, but after a day responding to a brutal dictator in Syria, who would
rather destroy his own country than let it move toward freedom, it is
heartening to be reminded that even the most repressive regime can reform and
even the most closed society can open.”
Hundreds of foreign
journalists and numerous teams of foreign monitors were allowed into Myanmar to
witness the voting, a contrast to previous years when a hermetic military
government tried to keep out prying eyes.
The European Union and
the United States have said that the fairness of the outcome will be crucial in
determining whether they lift their economic sanctions against the country.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and
other officials from her party complained of a litany of “irregularities”
during the campaign, but the alleged infractions — defacing of posters and
campaigning by government officials on behalf of the ruling party in
contravention of Myanmar’s Constitution — appeared minor compared with the
harsh treatment of the opposition in years past.
Significantly, local
election commission officials said that four candidates from the National
League for Democracy in the country’s capital, Naypyidaw, were running ahead of
their rivals from the ruling party by large margins. Naypyidaw, a newly
constructed city, is overwhelmingly populated by civil servants, and the
strength of the opposition there, if confirmed, would suggest disaffection from
within the ranks of the government.
One of the seats being
contested in Naypyidaw is the former constituency of President Thein Sein. Mr.
Thein Sein, a former general, was forced to resign from Parliament when elected
president last March, a requirement in the country’s Constitution.
State-owned television
did not announce results on its 8 p.m. news program, but showed one hour of
scenes of voters inside polling places. An announcer said that the authorities
had done everything in their power to ensure “free and disciplined” voting.
From a strictly
numerical standpoint, the results will not affect the balance of power in
Myanmar — fewer than 10 percent of the seats in Parliament were in play.
But voters on Sunday
described it as a joyous day, another step toward democracy as the country
undergoes radical changes under President Thein Sein, who offered an olive
branch to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi last year as part of his reform program.
In a neighborhood of
crumbling buildings and trash-strewn streets, Daw Khin Maung Mya, 76, said she
was filled with emotion after voting.
“I feel like crying when
I talk about Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” she said after casting her vote. “It felt
so good to vote for her party — only Daw Aung San Suu Kyi can save us from deep
poverty.”
Voters said they felt
more free than in the past to express themselves, both in the voting booth and
in public.
“We used to fear
speaking with foreigners about democracy,” Daw Kyi Kyi Tun, 50, a former
schoolteacher, told a reporter after voting in Yangon. “Now we have courage.”
Officials began tallying
votes after the polls closed in the late afternoon, including in the
constituency where Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was a candidate, an impoverished rural
area south of Yangon, the country’s main city. (Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi did not
vote on Sunday; her party decided not to transfer her official residency to her
constituency.)
Voters in Myanmar
appeared to relish what in established democracies has become a mundane
process. They were careful to follow the procedures: showing their identity
cards, ticking their choice on the ballot, folding the ballot and dropping it
in the ballot box.
For many supporters of
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, it was the first time they had voted in 22 years. The party boycotted the general election in 2010,
which was called by a military junta, the predecessor to the current
government.
The last time the
National League for Democracy was on the ballot, in 1990, it won a resounding
victory. But the junta ignored the result and in subsequent years crushed the
opposition.
Official results were
not expected for days, and the outcome will need to be confirmed by election
officials.
On Sunday, U Nyan Win,
the campaign manager for the National League for Democracy, said there had been
about 50 irregularities filed by midday, The Associated Press reported. Mr.
Nyan Win said that waxed ballot papers had made it difficult to mark votes and
that some ballot cards lacked the seal of the Election Commission, which could
render them invalid.
Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from
Istanbul.