National League for Democracy

National League for Democracy (NLD) is a Burmese political party founded on 27 September 1988. Its Chairperson is Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Member of Parliament, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and daughter of Aung San, a pivotal figure in the Burmese independence movement of the 1940s. The NLD was formed in the aftermath of the 8888 Uprising, a series of protests in favour of democracy which took place in August 8, 1998, and was ended when the military took control of the country through a coup.

The party won a substantial parliamentary majority in the 1990 Burmese general election. However, the ruling military junta refused to recognize the result. On May 2010, the party was declared illegal by the junta after refusing to register for the elections in November 2010. The following year, NLD announced its intention to be a political party in order to contend future elections and on December 2011, Burma’s Union Election Commission approved the application for registration. In the 2012 by-elections, won 43 seats out of 44 seats it contested. The party won a landslide victory in 2015, and is now the ruling party.

The party advocates a non-violent movement towards multi-party democracy in Burma, which had been under military rule from 1962 to 2011. Furthermore, the party supports human rights (including broad-based freedom of speech), the rule of law, and national reconciliation.

The party flag has a peacock in it which is a prominent symbol of Burma; the Peacock was numerously featured a number of times in Burmese monarchic flags as well as other nationalist symbols in the country. It is also associated with decades-long democratic struggle against military dictatorship. The NLD party symbol is adopted from the Myanmar (Burmese) Student Union Flag.