Myanmar Moves Into Uncharted Territory

Myanmar's opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) appears to have won a landslide victory in the country’s historic Nov. 8 elections — the first nationwide general elections Myanmar has seen in a quarter of a century. The Union Election Commission has released official results slowly, but with nearly three-quarters of the races now decided, the NLD has taken more than 80 percent of the parliamentary seats up for grabs and dominated state and regional elections as well. The party's internal estimates indicate that it won 406 seats, which would give it control over 60 percent of the parliament — an impressive electoral feat, considering that Myanmar's Constitution reserves 25 percent of the seats for military appointees. Assuming the results hold, the long-sidelined NLD will control both houses of parliament and be in position to elect the next president.

The vote is a triumph for the NLD's leader, democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent the better part of 20 years under house arrest. It is also a validation of the West's 2010 decision to abandon its strategy of isolating Myanmar's military government and begin engaging with the ruling generals to implement their "roadmap to democracy," an incremental and uneven process designed to democratize the country without undermining the military's role as the ultimate arbiter of power. Nonetheless, power in Myanmar is diffusing after five decades of authoritarian rule, and the next phase of the transition is unlikely to run smoothly. Now the NLD's task will be to forge a new power-sharing arrangement that does not alienate ethnic minority parties, ascendant grassroots Buddhist nationalist factions or military stalwarts.