Suu Kyi wins historic Myanmar election

Her father’s greatest political triumph happened before she was likely to have had any memory of it. Suu Kyi’s father, a general, garnered Burma’s independence from Britain by uniting the country’s national groups, and signed the independence agreement with British prime minister Clement Attlee in January of 1947.

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

Rhodes said Obama would meet with the Burmese president, along with other Asian leaders, during his Asia trip this month.

By Thursday evening, the latest constituencies announced their results that pushed Suu Kyi’s party to the brink of the crucial “super-majority” number in the country.

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

In 2012, when riots hit the historic township of Mrauk U in northwest Myanmar, Aung Ko Ko – an interfaith campaigner who is a Muslim but not a Rohingya – says he began getting begging calls from Rohingya hoping he might be able to do something to stop the Buddhist mobs.

On his call with Ms Suu Kyi, Mr Obama “commended her for her tireless efforts and sacrifice over so many years to promote a more inclusive, peaceful, and democratic Burma”.

He said Suu Kyi had spent many weeks in the capital Naypyidaw during Parliamentary sittings and had become quite close to many senior military figures.

Their conciliatory messages appeared to end lingering fears that the military might overturn the result, as it did when the NLD won a previous election by a landslide in 1990.

“What we have been struggling for all these years finally bears fruit, ” said Aung Naing Tun, 37, a merchant and supporter at NLD’s headquarters in Rangoon, also known as Yangon.

The 2015 result is just as pronounced with 23 million voters handing the NLD an estimated 75 per cent of the 330 seats not occupied by military appointees.

The election, the first Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party has contested since 1990, saw a huge turnout that has yielded more than 80% of seats for the NLD.

That toughness will come in handy as her government tries to negotiate with ethnic minorities and to distribute a few of the wealth being generated in the cities out to where most Burmese live – in rural Myanmar.

Meanwhile, the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) has booked 104 seats, including 28 in the House of Representatives, 12 in the House of Nationalities, and 62 in the Region or State Parliament.

He went on, “I think in the coming weeks what we want to see are the key players, key political actors and institutions in Burma sitting down together to process the election results and to look ahead to the future”.

She entered parliament two years later after the party swept a series of by-elections.

“We have very mixed feelings, partly happy and partly very concerned”, said Ma Thida of the vote.