Burma’s Long-Suffering Democracy Activists Stand on Edge of Historic Victory

Burma’s Long-Suffering Democracy Activists Stand on Edge of Historic Victory

Tallies suggest Aung San Suu Kyi's party has won around 70% of the vote so far

 TIME | 9 November 2015

One by one, parliamentary candidate Khin Moht Moht Aung wandered 18 polling stations in Rangoon’s Chinatown, delivering coffee to exhausted election monitors from her National League for Democracy (NLD). They were looking for any electoral irregularities in Burma’s most keenly anticipated balloting in a quarter-century. But the 30-year-old candidate needn’t have worried about shenanigans in her constituency. The next day, the opposition activist was officially declared the victor in the historic Nov. 8 polls.

Across Burma, officially now known as Myanmar, the NLD, headed by adored Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, looks to have won by far the most votes of any of the 91 registered parties that contested the election. Party elder Win Htein told TIME that the NLD has claimed 70% of the votes counted so far, even if most of the official results have not yet been announced. On Monday afternoon, the electoral commission head announced certain results in Rangoon, including the victory for Khin Moht Moht Aung.

If the 70% figure holds, it is the kind of landslide that would enable the NLD to form a government — as long as the military and its proxy party are willing to accept the results. (Both have indicated they will, unlike what happened in 1990 when the military regime ignored the NLD’s victory in nationwide polls.) As of early next year, when the new parliament convenes, Burma could well enjoy the first democratically elected government since a 1962 army coup. “I’m happy, excited and satisfied,” says Win Htein, who spent 14 years as a political prisoner, some in solitary confinement. “At the same time, I feel we have obligations to live up to the support of the people.”

Many of the NLD’s expected new MPs are not household names. Some are opposition activists, like Khin Moht Moht Aung, who toiled underground for years, back when being in possession of an NLD pamphlet could warrant a hefty jail term. Others are newly drawn to politics, doctors or lawyers or entrepreneurs who want to leave their country in better condition for the next generation. Wai Phyo Aung, a doctor, won a seat for the NLD in the lower house, representing Rangoon’s Thaketa township, where another NLD parliamentarian was slashed with a machete during a campaign event last month. “It’s so clear how our people are thirsty for change,” he says. “The aim of a political party is to serve the people. We have been waiting for this day.”