Myanmar Casts Votes in Historic Election
Voters across Myanmar cast their ballots Sunday in a historic parliamentary election that could see Aung San Suu Kyi win a seat in the legislature after a decades-long fight for democracy.
While the balance of power in the parliament will not change even if the opposition wins all 45 seats up for grabs, the vote is a symbolic victory for many in the country who have lived under military rule for almost half a century.
Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace prize laureate who has been the face of the country’s struggle for representative rule, won by a landslide the last time Myanmar held multiparty elections in 1990.
But the junta ignored the results and placed her under house arrest.
Released in November 2010, Suu Kyi was allowed to crisscross the country to rally support for her once-banned National League for Democracy party for Sunday’s race.
The NLD has fielded a candidate for every seat, with Suu Kyi representing Kawhmu, south of the former capital city of Yangon. She is running against a former military doctor.