Suu Kyi's party wins majority in Myanmar elections

Singer Si Thu Myo wears a shirt with Aung San Suu Kyi&#039;s face on it.

(Image credit: Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 13 November 2015

Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy has won a majority in Myanmar's parliament, and now has enough seats to choose the new president, the country's election commission announced Friday.

Although the victory ends decades of military-backed rule, the constitution still reserves 25 percent of parliament seats for the army. The constitution also forbids Suu Kyi from becoming president; her sons are British, and it says that a person with foreign-born children cannot hold the position. Out of 30 million eligible voters, about 80 percent showed up to the polls Sunday to participate in Myanmar's first free nationwide election in 25 years. Hundreds of thousands of people were not allowed to vote, including the Muslim Rohingya minority, who are not recognized as citizens.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.