BANGKOK — When an election landslide first ushered the National League for Democracy into a position of power in Myanmar, the party gained a robust popular mandate to extract the country from the army’s grip after decades of ruthless military rule.
The challenge was finding a way to pursue its agenda without prompting the military to retaliate. Under the country’s military-drafted Constitution, the party had to share power with the army, which had once imprisoned many of its leaders.
It pushed hard on its primary goal — bolstering the power of its singular leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. In other ways, it was in step with the military, leaving many of its repressive laws in place. But it also lived in fear, and the party tread gingerly after a key legal adviser was assassinated.
For the National League for Democracy, or N.L.D., there was no escaping one fundamental truth: The…
