Nobody ever expected Myanmar's democratic dawn to come up quite like thunder. But after the euphoria of by-elections on April 1st, in which the opposition National League for Democracy (nld) won 43 out of 45 seats, it did seem to be approaching fast. This week it was put back a little. On April 23rd the nld's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and its other successful candidates refused to take up their seats in parliament. There were echoes of the day in November 1995 when the nld pulled out of the national convention drafting the constitution, and was left in the political wilderness. But the party played down its latest protest: not a "boycott", it insisted, merely a "postponement".
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