'We've been waiting for this day for a long time': Excitement in the air as Myanmar's voters get a taste of democracy
On an emotional day in Myanmar, voters celebrate their freedom to cast a ballot in an election and express a sense of duty to take part in the poll
Factory manager Shein Win and his wife, Khin Myat Maw, arrived holding hands to cast their votes in Yangon in Myanmar's first free election in a quarter-century. Both now 46, they took part in a 1988 democracy protest that brought Aung San Suu Kyi to prominence.
"We've been waiting for this day for a long time," said Khin Myat Maw as they stood in line.
There were cheers from crowds of well-wishers, who held up ink-stained fingers to show they had voted, as Suu Kyi made a whistle-stop tour of polling booths in Myanmar's commercial capital.
Emotions ran high among the roughly 30 million people who went to the polls yesterday, with awe at the milestone their country had reached and a quiet sense of duty to be part of it. One man who works as an accountant in Singapore said he had flown home just to vote and would head back the next day.
In a downtown neighbourhood of Myanmar's city of Mandalay, Myint Myint, 95, was perched on a plastic chair carried by three men along a dirt path and past a snaking line of voters to the local polling station. "A vote is a vote," her granddaughter, Phyo Kyaw explained. "Come on, this is our responsibility."
But there were doubts and anxieties, too, as many voters recalled the election of 1990, when a landslide victory for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) was brushed aside by military rulers.