A month ago, on November 8, most Indians were glued to the television watching the roller-coaster of results pouring in from the Bihar election. Commentators were quick to dub the election as "historic" for stopping the Modi-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), election-winning juggernaut in its tracks. Few paid attention to the truly historic election being conducted in Myanmar that same Sunday. It was the first reasonably free and fair national election held there since 1990, when Aung San Suu Kyi's fledgling National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide victory, bagging 80 per cent of the constituencies nation-wide. That election win, occurring with Ms Suu Kyi already under house arrest, was ignored and later annulled by the ruling military government, in power since 1962.
Within 24 hours of the day-long election on November 8 (why did the Bihar elections have to take a month?!), it was clear that Ms Suu Kyi and the NLD were on their way to repeating a feat unprecedented in the annals of democratic elections. (Courtesy of Business Standard Column)
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