Hardest is yet to come for Suu Kyi's NLD, experts warn

By yesterday, all signs pointed towards a landslide victory for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), with the ruling party suffering heavy defeats, although full official results are not expected for days.

While confident NLD supporters celebrated, the most recent two leaders of the army-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party conceded defeat in their respective constituencies and said they would accept the results. 

But despite widespread euphoria, experts warn that an election victory was just the first step in the long road towards curtailing military power and speeding up democratic reforms.

“After almost five decades of military rule, the army remains the country’s supreme political institution,” said Nicholas Farrelly of the Myanmar Research Centre at the Australian National University (ANU).

“It will take many years before its influence can be watered down. This is only the beginning of a long process,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division. 

“There still needs to be serious negotiations between the NLD, Aung San Suu Kyi and the military, which automatically retains 25 per cent of seats in parliament.” 

The NLD has won a landslide before, in 1990, but the military disqualified that poll saying various ethnic and social groups had been excluded.

To avoid a similar development, commentators say that Suu Kyi must form an inclusive government that brings in Myanmar’s many smaller ethnic political parties. If she can to do this, “the chance of 1990 ... happening again is less likely and the army will have to cooperate and coordinate with the government led by the NLD whether they like it or not,” political commentator Yan Myo Thein said.

“The army is aware that it is hated,” said human rights activist and writer Ma Thida. “It wants to show that it has changed and is not like the army in the old days.” 

But even the NLD successfully negotiates with the military or smaller parties, challenges remain.

“Poverty, social exclusion, and ethnic and religious rivalries, none of these issues will be resolved quickly or cheaply,” said the ANU’s Farrelly.

Robertson points also to “anti-free speech laws and discriminatory practices that pre-date the military junta and go back to the colonial period”. 

Tackling these will be tough for a party that has no experience of ruling.

“It will be a steep learning curve for the NLD,” said Kyaw San Wai, a senior analyst at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

“Myanmar’s challenges are daunting for whatever party assumes power or government,” he said.

A strong election victory, therefore, is a good start to “right some of these persistent wrongs,” Farrelly argues. 

“A government with a strong popular mandate has the best chance of success,” he said.