NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) – Myanmar’s parliament dominated by pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party on Monday began a new and historic session that will install the country’s first democratically elected government in more than 50 years.
The National League for Democracy won a landslide in the Nov. 8 elections, winning 80 percent of the seats in the two houses of parliament to defeat the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party.
Legislators from the two parties and from smaller ethnic minority parties as well as nominated military representatives filed into the cavernous parliament for the session in which the members took a joint oath of office.
The session marks a historic turnaround for the NLD, which for years was suppressed by the military, which had ruled the country directly or indirectly after seizing power in 1962. NLD leaders including Suu Kyi and other critics were jailed, and overt political activity was crushed.
The Southeast Asian nation started moving away from dictatorship toward democracy in 2011, when the military rulers agreed to hand over power to a nominally civilian government headed by President Thein Sein, a general turned reformist.