Myanmar Parliament chief urges ‘losers’ to play fair

Sir: It has been reported that Aung San Suu Kyi has won her seat apart from her party National League for Democracy (NLD) capturing nearly 90 percent of seats in the Myanmar elections.

“Spoke to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi & congratulated her. India will be delighted to welcome her”, Modi tweeted, soon after arriving here on a three-day visit.

It is hard to understand that, before the election, Suu Kyi said she would take a position “above the president” if the NLD triumphed.

The 70-year-old smiled but said nothing to waiting reporters as she cast her ballot at a polling station near the lakeside villa that served as her prison when the country was under dictatorship.

Results have trickled in since the weekend, and on Friday the election commission announced the latest batch of seats that pushed the NLD over the threshold to secure an absolute majority in parliament.

Ms Suu Kyi was educated in India and has often said that her worldviews are inspired by its pluralism and competitive democracy. The election was historic, as it was the first free election in 25 years. A constitutional provision in the form of Article 59F bars a person whose family members owe allegiance to a foreign government from occupying the post of president.

Thein Sein has made similar comments online before, but he has now repeated them in public.

Now, though, with Ms Suu Kyi proving her legendary survival skills and resilience in the election and besting the generals, most of whom could not even win their individual parliamentary seats in an NLD wave, it is no longer a zero-sum game proposition for India to either be with the Myanmar military or the democratisers.

Myanmar’s two parliamentary houses resumed their 13th sessions here on Monday, a week after the country’s November 8 general elections.

The positive election outcome in Myanmar has opened space for India as a pivotal enabler of its slow, ongoing transition to democracy.

With almost all the votes counted over the weekend, the NLD has won about 78 per cent of the combined houses, or 390 of the 498 non-military seats, while the USDP has only 41.

A few 30 million people are eligible to vote, in an event that has posed major logistical challenges across a vast and poor country.

“Many pro-NLD supporters were disillusioned by her behavior after her release and when she became an MP”.

Myanmar’s government has denied Rohingya Muslims citizenship, and hundreds died in clashes with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in 2012.

The irony of the world’s largest democracy failing to adequately play the democracy card in countries where it is strategically called for should not be prolonged under the Modi government, which has been pursuing an agile and ambitious foreign policy by breaking new ground in India’s foreign relations.

The Nobel laureate has nevertheless pledged to rule an NLD government through a puppet president, without revealing a candidate or setting out how the arrangement would work.

By law, the military will hold at least 25 percent of the seats in parliament and maintain control over the powerful defense, interior and border ministries.

Under the indirect electoral system, the upper house, lower house, and military bloc in parliament each put forward a presidential candidate.

It is important to remember, however, that the road map of political reform was initiated from the top.

“Since we are having a landslide majority, there is no way we would consider a coalition” with ethnic parties, NLD spokesman Win Htein told Reuters.