Myanmar president peromises peaceful transfer power

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi – whose National League for Democracy party swept to a resounding victory in November 8 parliamentary elections – has opened talks with long-standing military foes as she prepares to form the next government.

President Thein Sein has also congratulated Aung San Suu Kyi on her election victory before full disclosure of the results by the Union Election Commission.

“This is quite incredible; nowhere else in the world is there such a gap between the end of the elections and the forming of the new administration and certainly it is something about which we should all be concerned”, she told reporters ahead of the elections.

NLD spokesman Nyan Win welcomed the confirmation of his party’s victory, saying that even though it was expected, it would now give the party more freedom to act.

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.

The president also said that the successful election was a result of the reform process put in place by his Union Solidarity and Development Party, which has won only 41 of the 478 seats that have so far declared. If the NLD asserts control over regional governments in minority areas, “it will be just like the situation under the USDP government”, he said.

Following her unofficial landslide, the leader of the NLD, Aung San Suu Kyi, has hinted at the possibility of working closely with the military while expressing the optimism that election results will be honoured by the long-ruling unelected institutions. “Can she remain the country’s moral authority now that she has to make politics?”

Learning from the military’s assault on democracy and brazen decision to reject the internationally recognised general elections in Myanmar 25 years ago, Indonesia should be more proactive than it has been in the past as a friend of Myanmar.

“We will hand this process [of reform] on to a new government …”

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has already requested meetings that she specified would be based on national reconciliation with President U Thein Sein, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Speaker Thura U Shwe Mann.

Although many have lived in Myanmar for generations, the Rohingya are not one of the 135 ethnic groups recognised under the country’s citizenship law and are thus entitled to only limited rights.

Ms Suu Kyi riled the generals by insisting that she would appoint a proxy to the top job while governing from a role “above the president”, in defiance of the constitution that they drew up.

A few believe it was introduced to allow USDP leaders to undermine the ousted chairman Shwe Mann, who was engaged in a leadership struggle with President Thein Sein.

A major issue for the NLD will be how to deal with Myanmar’s fractious ethnic minorities, who for decades have been conducting on-again, off-again insurgencies seeking greater autonomy.