As Aung San Suu Kyi prepares to move from dissident to backbench MP, it is clear Myanmar's longrepressed politics have changed at a stroke - and voters are demanding their lives improve with it.
The old alignment that kept the politics of principle of Suu Kyi and her National League of Democracy under the control of a military bent on power at all costs is ebbing.
In its place is the politics of policy. Both sides will be under pressure to deliver ideas and platforms to develop one of the region's poorest and most isolated nations. Those pressures were evident at the polling booths yesterday as some six million voters headed to vote in a parliamentary by-election that included Suu Kyi and other NLD figures for the first time in 22 years.
The NLD last night declared Suu Kyi had won her seat of Kawhmu, a poor farming area south of Yangon - even though official results could take days to confirm.
As word spread, thousands thronged the party's Yangon ramshackle headquarters. Crowds blocked the street, dancing to the party's signature Burmese rap and country songs, some even spilling into a tented tea stall used by the regime's photographers.
The NLD reported widespread irregularities, but few analysts expected a derailed election - given the widespread hopes for a successful poll to help end international sanctions.
