The democratic opposition in military-controlled Burma just won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. Joshua Goldstein celebrates:
Democracy is a great force sweeping the world in slow motion. Today Burma (Myanmar) took an important step toward democracy with minor parliamentary elections that elected the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to a seat after 20 years of harsh military rule. She may run for president in three years. The last elections, in 1990, were swept by her party and then ignored by a military government that kept her under house arrest for years at a time. The country has been isolated and under stiff international sanctions for decades. In 2007 the regime used massive lethal force to put down demonstrations led by Buddhist monks, just as it had shot protesting students in the streets in 1988. There is still a long way to go for Burma to reach real democracy — and end several long-running ethnic wars — but under its new reform-minded president it is moving vigorously forward.
Christian Caryl charts the road ahead:
[I]t is vitally important to keep the big picture in sight. As Aung San Suu Kyi and her colleagues know all too well, they are about to enter a parliament that has been carefully designed to prevent people like them from gaining much influence. According to the 2008 constitution that provided the ground rules for Burma's last general election two years ago, a full quarter of the seats in parliament are reserved for the armed forces. But an even larger number of seats are held by the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), created by the military regime in 1993 as a counterweight to the pro-democracy movement. If Aung San Suu Kyi and her friends really want to amend the present constitution before the next election rolls around in 2015, as they have said they plan to do, they will have to find allies within these two groups.
(Photo: National League for Democracy [NLD] supporters celebrate their victory in the parliamentary elections outside the party headquarters April 1, 2012 in Yangon, Myanmar. The National League for Democracy declared Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had won a seat in Myanmar’s Parliament election. Aung San Suu Kyi stated that by-elections would not be completely free and fair because of irregularities during preparations. The historical by-elections are seen as an important vote of confidence for the country as it continues on the road to political and diplomatic reform.By Paula Bronstein/Getty Images.)
The Dish 
