11 November 2015

The results won't be known for a few days yet, but it looks like Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) might have garnered up to 70% of the vote.

This is a major step toward democracy, the next will be in March 16 with voting for a President.

The world has to admire the strength of Aung San who was under house arrest for 15 years and applaud that her efforts have been instrumental in bringing about this move to democracy in a country that has been ruled by military dictatorship for so many years.

I remember visiting Burma in the late 1970's. Once the rice bowl of Asia, even then, the daily living conditions of people were severely straightened. Many people I spoke to survived on one meal a day. The (illegal) night market openly set up in the main streets of Rangoon, was the only place you could buy any products from other countries - if you had American dollars.

That was over 30 years ago. The fortitude of a people to survive and fight is so impressive and so removed from our comfortable existence in Australia.

Read more about the ramifications of this election in Myanmar here

Image: Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun in The Convesation