Some days political news seems like a plague of frogs. But occasionally there is a bright spot, as in this week’s elections in Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar), where the party of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide victory. More importantly, it appears Burma’s ruling military will abide by the results, which most emphatically did not happen when Suu Kyi’s party won a national election twenty-five years ago.
As the “to be sure” paragraphs in the WaPo account of the elections by Annie Green indicate, the opposition party’s long-forestalled victory will not resolve many of the country’s problems, from endemic poverty to the discrimination against the Rohingya Muslim minority (shockingly banned from participation in this election) to the powerful role the military has preserved for itself via a constitution the previous regime promulgated. But it should be a step forward for a long-suffering country.
