Myanmar begins new parliament session ending military-only rule Monday February 01,2016

Aung San Suu Kyi will lead her party National League for Democracy (NLD)into a new session of Burma's parliament on Monday February 01,2016, with lofty expectations that the first popularly-elected government in decades can reset a country ground down by half a century of military rule.

The Parliament is dominated by MPs from Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), which won 80% of elected seats in November's poll.
But a quarter of all seats are reserved for the military, which also retains control of key ministries.
One of the new parliament's first jobs will be to choose a new president.

Despite its huge majority in the legislature, the ruling NLD will have to forge a working relationship with the military, which automatically controls 25 percent of all parliamentary seats under the 2008 constitution and maintains control of several key government posts, including defense, interior and border security

Outgoing leader Thein Sein steps down at the end of March 2016.Elected members of both houses and the military will nominate three candidates to succeed President Thein Sein.The new president will then be chosen by a vote of the combined houses.

Aung Sen Suu Kyi is barred from being president by a military-scripted constitution because she married and had children with a foreigner

Many of the NLD's lawmakers are political novices in a parliament where 25 percent of all seats are still held by the army

Myanmar's National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrives for the opening of the new parliament in Naypyitaw Feb.1, 2016. After decades of struggle, hundreds of lawmakers from Aung San Suu Kyi's camp will form Myanmar's ruling party Monday, with enough seats in parliament to choose the first democratically elected government since the military took power in 1962.  

 

Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, center, arrives to participate in the inauguration session of Myanmar's lower house parliament in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Feb. 1, 2016.  

 

Newly-elected NLD members of parliament sit in a bus as they depart the city development committee compounds for parliament in Naypyidaw

 

Myanmar members of parliament attend the new session of the lower house in Naypyidaw on February 1, 2016

 

 

Note

• Myanmar has been under military rule since the army overthrew the last democratically-elected government in 1962. Until recently, the NLD’s activities in the country were suppressed and many of its leaders jailed.

• In a 1990 election, the NLD won 80 percent of the seats in parliament, but the results were later annulled by the military. Suu Kyi was also placed under house arrest prior to those elections.

• In 2010, Thein Sein’s Union Solidarity and Development Party, which is backed by the military, won an election in which the NLD refused to participate, protesting that it was held under unfair conditions. 

• After several changes in the election law, the NLD contested several dozen by-elections in 2012, winning virtually all of them.